


V3: Goodbye Hope Academy

by linkzeldi



Series: Dangan Box [5]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Medaka Box
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Final Killing Game, M/M, Monokuma Hunter, death game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2020-04-12 12:31:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 68
Words: 426,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19132087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linkzeldi/pseuds/linkzeldi
Summary: The other side of the final killing game, the survival game Monokuma Hunter takes place in what looks to be a wrecked city. The survivors all come to blows as Kamukura Izuru the artificially created Ultimate Hope and Kurokami Medaka the natural born genius try to understand each other. With Yasuke Matsuda in the middle just trying to live and escape this nonsense.The opposite side of the story alternating and continuing at the same time, the side hope to side despair.





	1. Prologue

  


 

 _We wanted to smile everyday,_  
_Like we did then,  
_ _That's all we wanted._

 _🦔_  
  
I'm really jealous.   
Of “Humans.”

I earnestly love the mass of gems that revolve around everything associated with that term.  
I just love humans.  
No matter the result, I want to love all of them, all of them, all of them.

That’s just condescension.  
  
Who am I then?

It’s customary for the narrator to introduce themselves. Perhaps I could be Tsumugi Shirogane imitating someone else but she seems too busy telling he own story.  
I’m an extremely stiff girl.  
Who tried to live by copying what other people do.  
When I say I love humans.  
It’s more of a cry for help.  
It’s like when a desperate person loves an idol and expects that idol to love them back.  
Just a plain old lonely girl is your narrator. Unlike the other narrator I don’t plan on lying, I’m far too stupid of a girl to ever tell a lie. Besides, the unreliable narrator trick is no longer revolutionary in mystery stories, it’s a cliche by this point.  
  
By the way have you ever thought about yourself as the protagonist of a story? You don’t need the passion of a shonen protagonist, or the conviction to the ideals of hope, but have you ever once thought you were caught up like a person in a rushing river in the grand flow of events of some story? When events happened to you right after another, did you assume it was all leading to a purposeful conclusion?

 

That there’s a plot outline we follow ourselves, like ants marching through tunnels drawn idly through the sand, creating something that looks like an interconnected weaving of threads, that only makes sense to “someone” perceiving it all from the other side of the glass. That glass walls surround us, and the only way to stop being ants who can only move forward through the mess of imperceivable complex tunnels that we will never see the whole picture of is to shatter the glass?

  
Thinking of the world that way is wrong.  
That’s not being alive.

That’s just inertia.  
It’s a fatalist point of view, in other words it’s fatal.  
People live and die by their own narratives.  
  
People see reality in narrative form. That’s true, but also the opposite side of the coin is also true. People become attached to the reality that they find present is fictional narratives. For example, even what you would call surrealism, still requires reality. The surreal story of Gregor Samsa waking up as a cockroach still requires the human element of understanding who Gregor is. His transformation is never explained, but the person he was, is, and how he changes is. In the show twin peaks, despite the surreal and confusing elements of the story, there are still characters which the audience gets invested in.  
  
Even the most surreal tales require an element of grounding. Otherwise it’s all just nonsense. It might work as an example of breaking the rules of a story, but nobody will have any fun reading it.  
  
Postmodernism would not exist without modernism.  
Punk would not exist without establishment.  
Fiction requires some kind of reality in order to get human beings invested.

People see reality in fiction, and they read fiction as reality, fiction affects reality, and reality informs fiction, neither of them are completely true or false but they both contradict each other while existing at the same time.  
  
If the other side of this story is a story of fiction affecting reality, than this is one of reality affection fiction.  
  
There is no fate.  
There is no inevitability.  
There is no karma.  
Indeed; reality is stranger than fiction.

  
Hereafter beings a preposterous side story to the main scenario, a background story, a story in the shadows, existing outside of the fiction which Shirogane Tsumugi intends to tell but one that is undeniably real. A story of cynicism, where everyone is deceiving someone, and everything said is a lie, but there is no trickster, and no villains. A fatalist story where all the participants lose, every last one of them. A meaningless story where dialogue is futile, because not a single person listens to another person, and even when they do nothing that they say matters. A realist story where friendship and trust means nothing. A story which deconstructs everything, wholly bereft of meaning and intent and significance, who missed its chance to be someone and therefore it was decided in advance it would lose everything. A story without a single drop of romanticism, and without an fanservice.  
  
A story that was never meant to be read.  
A story with no author, no readers, and no antagonists.  
And no characters either.  
Only human beings.  
  
Not a single hero makes an appearance.  
Every last one of them is lost.  
Every last one of them is broken.  
Not just me.

 

The boy with two brains who had everything crammed inside of him.  
The boy with two brains who has nothing inside of him.  
  
The neurologist who has nothing to do with things.  
The neurologist who is zero.

The man who wants to destroy despair to protect his friends.  
The man who wants to destroy his friends.  
  
The man who was softer than anybody else.  
The man who was the most violent, the most cruel.    
  
The girl with the undying body.  
The dead apple who keeps on rotting, forever.

Not a single one of them could be called normal, but at the same time. No matter how much they wish to escape it, no matter how deranged, how wicked, how despair inducing they become none of them at all can ever stop being human beings.

 

The moment they think they’ve outrun their humanity.  
It will catch up with them.  
Because human beings are lonely.  
  
This is a real-fiction story, a human story. The opposite of a love story, is a story of one sided love. Unlike justice and hope, love doesn’t always have to win after all.  If the question asked by the other story is what is truth and what is lie, then, this one asks what is human and what is not human? Who was human all along and who was simply pretending to be? What is ordinary and what is extraordinary?  
  
At the end you will see every misfortune in this tale is my own fault, due to my desire to become human. That is why I hide my identity. That is why I will not tell you who I am.

 

There is no narrator for this story.  
If that is acceptable, let us begin the human examination.

 

🦔

 

“Yeah, I got one question for you two super geniuses. Why the hell are we still alive?” 

  
Matsuda Yasuke asked.    
  
“I think you would have to go to philosophy for the answer of why we’re alive in the first place.”    
  
Medaka rather cheekily responded.    
  
“Philosophy isn’t really about answering questions, just asking more questions. How tedious…”   
  
Kamukura, also being cheeky added on.    
  
The three main characters who had supposedly ‘died’ in the other plot were casually playing a game of cards. They were very much alive after having been killed off. For the sake of spite, if nothing else.    
  
Matsuda who was a walking ball of stress as usual, who soaked up even more stress the way Kamukura soaked up information like a sponge, grabbed his long dark hair and pulled on it. “Just because you’re both geniuses doesn’t mean you have to be such smartasses with me!”    
  
That was his job anyway.    
If they both started being the one with sharp tongued wit, then he basically was useless among these two. After all, they both could copy the talents of the Ultimate Neurologist in a few minutes. Not only that, they could probably perform brain surgery on themselves like they were Doctor Blackjack or something. 

 

“How predictable. Matsuda’s getting grumpy and complaining again.”    
  
He wondered what he was doing between these two anyway. What did that make him? Their babysitter? Matsuda reached forward towards Kamukura and then flicked him on the bridge of his nose.    
  
“Ow.”   
  
“Did you predict that?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“You know for the tall, dark and silent type you sure are lippy.” 

 

“Matsuda, you’re not really angry at me you’re just venting your frustrations towards this situation.”    
  
“You, know if you’re so smart instead of mouthing off how about you explain what the hell is going on?” 

  
“Well. I would be capable of doing that but it seems like someone wiped my memory. Their might be a traitor amongst our group, I wonder who that could be. Perhaps it’ll be a shocking twist that even I can’t predict.”   
  
“I know you are but what am I?”    
  
“That’s a really mature response.” 

  
“Who said I had to be the mature one? We’re all a bunch of damn brats aren’t we?” When Matsuda caught Kamukura’s mismatched eyes staring at him, he leaned forward bringing two fingers up. Then, he quickly poked at both eyes.    
  
“Ow.”   
  
“I told you I hate being analyzed. Quit staring, it’s rude.”    
  
“I wonder whose fault it is that my eyes are like this? Who? Who? Anyone care to guess?” Hinata said, rubbing his eyes in annoyance.    
  
Watching the both of them, Kurokami Medaka chuckled softly.    
  
“Eh? What is it?” Matsuda turned his head around, his face just as sour as always. Usually he pretended to be more mature at least in case adults were looking, but they had run away from everybody else in the city and it was just the three of them now.    
  
“Matsuda, you’re always saying you want nothing to do with others and you don’t want to play family, and yet when you’re around Kamukura you bully him like he’s your little brother.” 

 

Matsuda scowled. “This is why I hate romanticists. All that love for your fellow human beings is rotting your brain away.”    
  
“Hmm, Matsuda. I thought you were the one who did almost everything for the sake of love?” Kurokami Medaka said, again rather cheekily. 

  
“Hey, I already know I’m the worst human being in this room. This has nothing to do with me.” Matsuda said.    
  
Human being.   
When Medaka was around this two, she felt human.    
They were three classmates laughing together about inconsequential things and giving each other a hard time. The three of them were not even friends. Matsuda was friends with Kumagawa and Junko. Medaka had Shiranui and Zenkichi. Hinata had Komaeda, Fuyuhiko and Peko.    
  
Yet the three of them were together now.   
Thrown together by misfortune and circumstance.    
All of them looked at the people in front of them, like there was someone important missing.    
They were playing a game of cards around a table, but none of them even paid attention to the game it was just a distraction. 

 

They were just playing old maid. Matsuda looked at the jokers in his hand. He had ended up with both of them, because he was the worst player here. He would complain about both of them cheating later, but right now he did not want to let go of those jokers.    
  
Looking at a pair of jokers, red and black reminded him of Kumagawa and Junko.    
They were all supposed to die at the end of their last adventure.    
Matsuda was willing to die for the sake of Junko and Kumagawa.   
Medaka was willing to die for the sake of the world.   
Kamukura was willing to kill himself, his ideals, and dirty his hands for the sake of Komaeda.    
  
They were all paradoxically alive.   
They were kept alive so they could die again. At the present moment the three of them had found each other in the middle of a survival set up in an abandoned city to contrast the one set up in the school.    
  
A killing game and a survival game.   
A fictional story and a real one.    
  
Around all three of their wrists there were silver bangles. Despite having a neurologist, an artificial Ultimate Hope, and a natural born Ultimate Hope all in the room together, not a single one of them could figure out how to get the bracelets off.    
  
The only person who could outwit the three of them and manipulate them like pieces on a board was Enoshima Junko, and if not her, then her biggest fan. 

  
A scientific prototype, a neurologist, and a spoiled rich girl. The three of them being together sounded like the opening to a really bad joke. 

  
Even Kumagawa would not laugh at it. Matsuda put his cards down at the table. All three of them might have wished more than anybody to go back to their school days, to just be school children once more but that would not change the reality.    
  
  


He could accept it the easiest, because he had already seen his daily life crumble and fall apart in front of him. “Alright, somebody needs to talk. I can’t be the only one talking shit here.”    
  
“But you’re so good at it,” Hinata said.   
  
“It’s embarrassing!” Matsuda snapped back. “If I actually knew how to talk to people at all, you think I’d be this rude? I’m not clever, I’m just a miserable failure.”   
  
“I think there’s such a thing as being too honest…”   
  
“A cheeky little lying brat like you would know, huh?” 

  
“If I’m a liar it’s only because you gave me the talent of the Ultimate Gambler as well as several other bluffing related talents.”    
  
“Jeez, what since Komaeda’s not around you gotta be the passive aggressive one?” Matsuda spoke, and then when he noticed Hinata flinch instantly regretted what he said.    
  
He didn’t care about other people. All he cared about was his own tiny little world. About the family that he could never have. About the people he could never protect. Yet, he could understand how Hinata felt.   
  
Komaeda to Hinata was probably what Junko was to him, and Zenkichi was to Medaka. More than just a childhood friend, more than just a person to love, it was like if they were gone you started slowly to forget about who you are, and who you were supposed to be.    
  
“Well anyway, we should at least tell each other how we got here. Between the three of us, maybe one of us will figure out what we’re even doing alive, or what we’re supposed to do from now on?”    
  
The three main characters were as clueless as the audience.    
  
Yasuke smoothed back his hair. Even after he ran his hand through it, the antennae of hair at the top of his head just stuck back up again. “Are we just unlucky or what?”   
  
“Luck is such a boring talent.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know and I’m the one who gave it to you. Moving on. What about you Kurokami-san?”   
  
“It’s obvious what we have to do right? We find our friends and take them back.”   
  
  


“Spoken like a true shonen hero. Except, uhm, earth to Medaka-chan we don’t even know where the hell we are.” Matsuda said, waving his hand in front of her face. “Actually, how the hell did you get back on earth anyway? Weren’t you supposed to be in space.” 

  
“Mm, I can explain that.”    
  
“Maybe you should have stayed in space. In space your problems look so much more insignificant.”    
  
Matsuda remembered once, Junko grabbed his hand and pointed at the moon. She asked him if he ever wanted to go to space with her to become a NEET in space. At the time he thought she was just joking around. Now it sounded like something she would do.    
  
What an annoying girl.   
Unbelievable.   
He hated her so much.   
He could not live without her.    
  
“Aren’t you mad at all, that either of us betrayed you?” Matsuda asked Medaka. He betrayed everyone for the sake of that girl. He still could not forgive himself for that.    
  
“Well, even if you two are my enemies. Enemies and friends are the same thing to me. That’s no reason why we can’t sit down and talk out our differences.”   
  
It sounded naive. Idealistic. Anticlimactic. No, more than that. “What an incredibly lonely thing to say.” Matsuda grumbled. “If you keep saying shit like that I’m going to feel sorry for you.”    
  
He sighed, a tired exhausted sigh. He was a mad scientist. He betrayed the world for the sake of Enoshima Junko. He created franktenstein’s monster because Hope’s Peak Academy told him to. He was at the center of the incident that almost ended the world.    
  
He was as far off the beaten path as someone could get.   
Yet compared to these two, he was downright normal.   
He guessed that did make him the babysitter.    
  
“Alright, let’s all of us explain how we got here. I’ll start out. It’s a story with the worst main character imaginable, but pay attention. Especially you Mr. Short Attention Span.”    
  
Matsuda said, as he grabbed Kamukura’s ear and tugged it the moment he noticed his attention was drifting elsewhere. And like that, in medias -res, desperately seeking out explanation, the story began


	2. Matsuda Yasuke's Human Exam

**Week One: Let's Begin the Human Exam  
** **Player: Matsuda**

The melancholic narration seems almost out of character for me.  
I’ll try to cheer up a little bit.

Yahoo!

Matsuda Yasuke dreamed.  
In his dream, he was complaining.  
It was a very realistic dream because he spent most of his waking time bitching as well.

“What the hell is the point of me sneaking in all of these toys for you if you’re just going to break them?”

“I never asked you to. Whether you bring enrichment for the animal or not, at the end of the day they’re still in a cage. Toys are equally boring, whether they’re broken or whole.”  
  
“Then, why do you keep breaking them disphit? I keep asking you if you want anything else in this room but you’re the one who keeps whining ‘it’s pointless, it’s pointless’ if you dismiss everything as boring before you even try it then no shit you’re going to be bored. It’s like you’re not even using that brain I worked so hard to give you at all.”  
  
“...My word. Everything you say is boring.”

 

It was at some point after this the scientists would begin to question where Kamukura’s sharp tongue, and bad attitude had come from even though he was supposedly a blank slate.  
The answer was pretty obvious.

Dressed in a lab coat, his shirt underneath unwashed, dark circles around his eyes and his hair as messy as his personality, Matsuda Yasuke was rocking a look known as ‘mad scientist chic’.  
However, despite the allusions that could be made to the scene of Frankenstein where the doctor argues with his own creation. This was hardly something so vicious. Yasuke was scolding him like a nagging mother.

  
However, Kamukura Izuru had no frame of reference for that behavior. All he knew was Matsuda treated him in a way that was different from all the other scientists.  
  
Despite the fact that Kamukura had been living here for months, the room they were standing in did not give the impression of anyone living here. There was nothing there. Interior design was kept to a minimum with white wall paper, and no carpet, and the only furniture was a single bed and a drawer. The only sign that Kamukura lived in this room was a set of bloodied bandages piled on the drawer. Kamukura’s hair was starting to get longer, it fell out of the bandages wrapped around his head. He was wearing blue hospital rooms, either an extravagant prison, or a low-budget hospital room, that was the impression the room gave.

“Oi. Look people in the eyes when you talk to them. I was with you when you were a brain dead drooling idiot, since when did you start developing enough of a personality to have a rebellious phase?”  
  
As his personality was emptied out, scraped away from him on the inside Kamukura was at first completely empty. All he did was grip his head and complain about the pain from his multiple surgeries.  
  
Then he was like a child, with no memories of the world he pointed to everything and asked over, and over, what’s this? What’s this? What’s this?

He absorbed knowledge so quickly, but his reasoning and emotions lagged behind.

  
“Personality…” Kamukura said that world slowly, as if it puzzled him. Something everybody else, even normal people had, but he who was supposed to be better than all of them was lacking. He picked up a book and shoved it in Matsuda’s face. “In this book it says your personality, is first developed at a formative stage by your family, and then developed further by the interactions with people around you, and your own actions defining who you are.”

  
“I’m surprised you put it in such a simple way. You’re usually more of a pretentious ass than this.”  
  
“But, I… I don’t have a mother or father. I don’t have anybody. I don’t do anything. I don’t even leave this room. All of my knowledge comes from books, so the world outside this room is about as real to me as any fiction. So then, who am I?”  
  
“You’re Kamukura Izuru.”

 

“Even that name was just given to me. Do you know what it’s like living with only what others have given you? There’s no one waiting for me in the outside world, I… I’ll disappear.”

 

Yasuke knew exactly what he felt like. The only person obligated to care for him was his mother. Then, she became sick and could no longer care for him. Nobody else helped him. Not a single person. They told him to be a good child for her sake, which basically meant don’t cry when you get hit.  
  
After he lost his mother, nobody else in the world wanted him. His only family, his only place of belonging, was the mother who had passed away. He was just an unnecessary surplus, a child left behind. A forgotten and unwanted child was just invisible. He could shatter like glass and blow away like dust, and nobody would even know he was missing.

The only reason he had a place in this academy was because he had talent, and therefore he had use to the researchers. He was letting them exploit him, to have some place of belonging. Amukura was the same, if he did not cooperate with the scientists he would be abandoned as a failure, Frankenstein’s monster let loose in the wild.  
  
Locking himself in a cage was better than losing everything. That was right, this was all he had, that was why he had to do everything to protect this tiny little world of his. A world of just him and Junko. 

“I… I don’t have a family either…”

Suddenly, the stage lights went black and Kamukura disappeared. A spotlight turned on and in the same room, Kumagawa was suddenly standing there instead. As if to signal the previous scene ended and a new scene began.

“I didn’t want Enoshima Junko to get involved with others… I thought I would be protecting her that way. That’s why I hid her… That’s why I desperately tried to hide her. But it was pointless, my actions did nothing. What I did meant nothing to Enoshima… in the end…”

『In the end…?』Kumagawa Misogi when he moved it looked like shadows were dancing, and when he smiled it was like a pale moon rising on a pitch black night. 『No, no, no you don’t get it Yasuke-chan. It was right from the beginning that all of your actions were pointless.』

“I know, because it was all arranged by Enoshima Junko.”

『No, shut up about her already! Don’t you know people hate the kind of lovesick idiots who just talk on and on about their girlfriends? Let me put it this way, even if Enoshima Junko was just the normal childhood friend you thought she was. If this story ended happily with you protecting your friend and then embracing her for a kiss as the credits rolled it would still be pointless.』

“What the hell are you talking about? This is all because my feelings mean nothing to her…” His eyes were full of anger, sadness, love and hatred, all boiled and concentrated together, but even then there was a mysterious calmness expressed on his face.  
  
He could not smile, and that pissed Kumagawa off to no end. Even when he looked like he had given up on everything, he still had that scowl. Like he was too cool to smile. 『You’ve got it all reversed and backwards, like you’re looking into a mirror. It’s her feelings that don’t matter to you, that’s why the result wouldn’t change if she loves you or not.』  
  
“What…? What’s so funny?” Matsuda, lived his entire life for the sake of Enoshima Junko. It was like Kumagawa was rejecting all of him with those words.

『It’s all because you don’t have a family. That’s not Enoshima Junko’s fault. In fact whether she loves you or not won’t change a thing about what happened with your mother. Even if you successfully protected her now it won’t make up for what you lost in the past. You’re just a lonely child, crying out. I get why you would want to deny it. I don’t, but I do. But… Yasuke-chan.』

“You’re the worst, Kumagawa-kun. You lie to people and say such cruel things.”

『Yasuke-chan! It’s all because you don’t have a mother! You’re going to live the rest of your life with a fatal wound on our body. Instead of taking care of you, the person you relied on the most inflicted that wound on you. For no reason at all, for no purpose, you didn’t deserve it! Other people get to grow up in households where they’re loved and cared for all the time, and not you! You’re going to live lacking in what everybody else has! You’re still expected to live carrying far more baggage than anybody else, nobody is obligated to care about you because they have their own problems. You still tried to be strong and normal. You tried to protect someone! You thought I have to do this, or else I’ll lose everything. But, you already lost everything to begin with. You lost everything when your mother died. You haven’t gained a single thing since then. You’ve just been in denial this whole time.』  
  
“Hey, hey, Kumagawa-kun don’t you think you’re going too far with your lie? Even I wouldn’t say things that rude…”

『I’m not lying. That’s just who you are, Yasuke-chan. A sniveling brat that no one wants, because his blood family is dead. Talent changes nothing. Love changes nothing. That’s why it’s all so damn pointless.』  
  
The worst.  
He was being lectured by a reserve course student. Someone like Kumagawa who only wallowed in his own misery, and whined about his tragedy, was lecturing him like some kind of god.  
  
“I see. Then, who was I trying to protect all this time? If this has nothing to do with Enoshima Junko?”

『Yourself.』  
  
The child clinging to his leg.  
The child hiding behind him.  
The child hiding his face.  
The child who was told not to cry.  
An awful, ugly child.

“Kumagawa-kun, since we’re friends is it okay if I kill you now?”

『Yeah. What fun. I’m sure killing me will put your mind at ease. It won’t be hope, despair, and it won’t be to protect anybody. Nothing more than a fun little distraction. 』

“You’re wrong! You’re wrong! Don’t turn this around. You’re so full of shit, shit river! I did everything for her, and y-”  
  
『Well then, go ahead and kill me. Kill me with your own hands.』  
  
Just for yourself.  
Without saying it’s for anyone else.  
No excuses, pleas no defenses.  
Just kill me by your own will.  
Commit a pointless crime.  
Meaningless slaughter.  
Thinking you can do something for others is nothing more than a happy delusion. But realizing the truth doesn’t make you feel any better either. Just like me you have no place in this world.  
What you’re falling into isn’t despair, it’s just emptiness.

“I see. Then die.”

 _Die._ _  
_ _Die. Die. Die._ _  
_ _Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die._

Matsuda wrapped his hands around that thing’s neck, and squeezed like he was trying to break it between his fingers. When he looked at that thing’s face, he saw not Kumagawa Misogi’s smiling face, but his own face looking back at him.  
  
_I should just die already._

『You’re so stupid, Yasuke-chan! You got outwitted by that stupid, empty headed, vain girl even though you’re supposed to be a genius. You’re getting lectured by an idiot right now! You don’t know a single thing, so how do you know you’re supposed to die? Don’t say… such stupid things... 』

Even if it was meaningless or a waste.  
Even if he was only protecting himself.  
Even if his whole life was a stage play written as a tragedy by Enoshima Junko.  
Kumagawa Misogi did not want Matsuda Yasuke to die.  
  
Kumagawa tried to speak to him with as hands tightened around his throat with his last breaths, but Matsuda could no longer see him. He could only see the child that he was strangling. Just like the day his mother lost her mind and tried to strangle him. If only he had died that day alongside her. If only he had been crushed like an insignificant insect, just like mother was.  
He did not want to become happy.  
He did not want happy memories with his childhood friend.  
He just wanted the child in front of him to die.

『You don’t need childhood friends, or family. You’re going on ahead without me. You’re gonna be alone from now on so li-…』  
Matsuda heard a loud noise, cutting off the word ‘live’ before Kumagawa could finish it, like the sound of something breaking. It was so loud he woke up suddenly as if thrown from his dream straight into reality.

 

🦔

 

“A nightmare…”  
  
Yasuke Matsuda muttered under his breath.  
  
“Meh, and somehow reality is even worse.”  
  
Really, how gloomy of him. This guy wears doom and gloom like it’s going out of style.  
  
He inspected the area around him, and realized he was tied to a hospital stretcher in an abandoned hospital room.  
  
Really, really that’s what he gets. He dresses and acts like he’s some kind of undead doctor all the time, he should have realized that he was going to attract these circumstances. The creepy hospital vibe that this place gave off was perfect for him.  
  
“Ugh, brain. Either kill me with a lethal brain aneurysm, or cut this headache shit out already.” He moved his head over as much as he could to see the monitor in front of him suddenly come to life. Onscreen there was a digital readout of letters scrolling by.

 _Monkuma Hunter_ _  
_ _> Insert Coin _ _  
_ _Rule #1 You are forbidden to go out at daytime. A sleeping drug will be administered, putting all participants to sleep._ _  
_ _Rule #2 The missions for each week must be completed on time. Otherwise every single participant will be killed._ _  
_ _Rule #3: Forbidden actions. There is a single action on your bangle you are not allowed to perform. If that action is performed, then a lethal dose of poison is administered._

_Mission Number One: Gather all living participants to Towa Tower. Fail and face Erasure._

Matsuda immediately stretched his neck to its very limit to check if there was a bangle around his wrist. He saw a digital message circling around.

_Cannot go a minute without holding somebody else’s hand._

Matsuda immediately struggled against his bindings, but all he accomplished was knocking over the stretcher and falling to the side. “Well, this is the single lamest way to die possible.” Matsuda gave an exhausted sigh. If Zenkichi were here he would just flex his muscles and destroy the bindings. “Well, I guess lame and pathetic is what I deserve.”

Thirty more seconds. Then it would not matter if he was loved or hated anymore. He no longer had to worry about Enoshima Junko. If he was dead he did not have to think about her at all. Suddenly, Matsuda forced his shoulder to dislocate knowing his medical knowledge of the body. He dislocated that arm in two more areas to free himself, and then moved his arm like a whip to grab hold of the buckle that kept him tied. The moment his bindings came loose he scrambled onto the floor and getting up to his feet.  
  
Fifteen seconds.  
He looked around the room for anything, and saw that there was what looked like a treasure chest in an rpg with his name written on the lid.  
He quickly opened it.  
Inside there was a severed hand covered in bandages. It was perfectly preserved. A pale hand, with bright red fake nails at the end of each finger.  
  
“I hope whoever is running this stupid game knows that I hate them.”  
  
Yasuke grabbed onto the severed hand stopping the digital countdown timer on his bangle just before it hit zero. He shoved the hand into the pocket of his lab coat, because he did not want to look like a weirdo.  
  
If there was a being an obsessive weirdo over Junko scale, Matsuda and Mukuro were both at 9s, but Komaeda at a 10 was just somewhere where he was not willing to go.

He looked at his reflection in a stainless steel tray of surgeon’s tools. He was wearing the same unwashed shirt, messy tie, and open toed sandals as ever. As if to snarl at his own reflection, he glared and narrowed his glittering eyes. His hair was messily spiked, as if prodding the heaven’s themselves, it seemed to be a vivid analogy for his prickly personality.

On top of that he wore a white lab coat. Knowing him it would probably not remain that color of pure white for long. He picked up a scalpel from the tray and stuffed it in his pocket as well. Well, so much for loving and trusting his fellow human beings.  
  
As he staggered out into the hallway, his head still not entirely there in this situation with only the vague goal of  _live_ guiding him left over from the dream he had had, he began to mutter to himself again.  
  
“I guess I have to wait for someone to save me. Dear god, I’ve literally asked you for nothing in my life, so please I don’t care if they’re trying to kill me or save me, just let me not run into an annoying person.”  
  
Matsuda is rather sharp tongued, but I’m starting to suspect he really loves hearing the sound of himself talk. He grabbed onto an IV stand for support, using it as a cane to lean his body against. He finally made it outside after several slow plodding foot steps.  
  
In front of him he saw, a pitch black city without even a single light on. It was eerie, because most cities were still lit up even at night time. He looked up in the sky and could see all of the stars that would usually be obscured by the city lights.

Then, in the distance he saw a human shaped figure. Tall and thin, with long hair, probably belonging to an adult. When he got closer he recognized familiar features on his face, purple hair that went all the way down to his waist, red eyes, dressed in tight clothing with a cross hanging from his neck as if he was copying western fashion trends.  
  
Kurokami Maguro. Matsuda did not know much about him, other than he was the older brother of Kurokami Medaka. He remembered the other girl’s boisterous and forceful personality.  
  
“Nevermind, I don’t want to be saved by this person.”

Matsuda immediately turned around and tried to get away.  
  
“Wait! Wait! Don’t just run away before we even introduce ourselves.”  
  
Maguro ran after him.

 

🦔

 

The moment Maguro learned of his forbidden action, he immediately grabbed Matsuda’s hand and walked along the abandoned sidewalk holding hands with him. Holding hands with another human being made his skin crawl for some reason.  
  
Geez. Holding hands with a living breathing person is somehow worse than having to hold onto a severed hand you hide in your pocket? You have issues, Matsuda-kun.

“There’s no need to be strangers, Matsuda-kun. We’re cousins after all. I heard about you from my little sister.”  
  
Matsuda did not really want to talk at all. However, he also did not want to admit he was somehow more socially dysfunctional than the weirdo who was obsessed with his little sisters.  
  
“Sorry, but I don’t really give a damn about your complicated ass family tree, or your family drama.”  
  
“Matsuda Fukuro was your father, wasn’t he?”  
  
“My only family was my mother whose dead now. I may be connected to the Kurokami’s but it doesn’t matter. I don’t know who that guy is really, he’s just some guy that bailed when my mom became too difficult to deal with. I thought I was talking to him in my head, but I was probably just imagining the worst personal version of myself. A mad scientist who does not care about anything but comforting himself.”

“Umm, I see are you feeling alright Matsuda-kun?”

Oops.  
He meant to play it aloof and conceal his emotions from Maguro but instead he just let them all spill out. He really was so clumsy. It was adorable, as much as he tried to distance himself from others he was a painfully straightforward guy just like Zenkichi.  
  
“Yeah, I love waking up in creepy abandoned hospitals. I’m some kind of goddamn psycho and this is my idea of fun.”  
  
Matsuda pictured in silhouette, Enoshima Junko an Kumagawa Misogi. If they were here in this situation they would be smiling right now. That was why he wanted to scowl extra hard just to spite them.  
  
“Hmmm, what’s the last thing you remember Matsuda-kun? That might help us a little bit in this situation.”  
  
“I betrayed everybody and erased their memories. Oh, also your precious little sister is dead because of me too, probably. So feel free to hate me whatever, ugh, living is such a pain in the ass.”  
  
Despite his foul mouth, Maguro turned around. His eyes were open and honest just like his little sister’s. “You really want to be left alone, don’t you?”  
  
Matsuda’s only response to that kind hearted statement was to growl like he was a sulking cat.  
  
“I know it might not mean much, hearing this from a spoiled rich boy but I can understand you a little bit. I never really considered my father or my mother as parents. My only family was, my younger sisters I chose to love.”  
  
Matsuda’s batted his girlish eyelashes. His shirt eyes that looked, exceedingly lonely, looked away. “I’m not interested in playing family. I told Medaka-chan a thousand times already.”  
  
The people he was interested in playing family with.  
A pair of sisters, one rough hued and military minded a responsible older sibling, the other cunning, girlish, and a foolish younger sibling.

And between them an idiot who was always smiling.  
Those three were a family somehow even unconnected by blood. They were the people he wanted to be chosen by, but… there was no place for him. There was never any place right from the beginning. Maybe if he paid more attention to Mukuro being abused at Junko’s hand. Maybe if he tried harder to understand Junko’s true nature rather than believing the comfortable lie she told him.  
  
“If you’re trying to be nice to me then just stuff it. You don’t owe me anything, blood relation or not. The only person who was ever obligated to be nice to me was my mother.”

Maguro simply scratched at the back of his head with his free hand, as if Matsuda’s negativity did not even reach him. “You have a rather charming view of family, don’t you?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s me, Mr. Charming. I just think nobody else in the world has to give a damn about you, you know? Except the people related by blood, they’re supposed to, because they’re born connected. That’s why no matter how many times Junko hurts her, Mukuro always forgives her. Because she’s scared to lose the one connection she was born with.”

A connection like a thin red string, soaked and dripping with blood. In the past he would have done anything to maintain a connection like that, even if it was tied around his neck. Except, he was never connected to anyone to begin with, it never had anything to do with him. That was why, he did not deserve it now.

“I wonder if that’s the right way to think…”

“Hey, don’t you dare look down on Mukuro. How the hell can you understand her if you haven’t been through that same shit? You have a kind sister whose like a saint. The only one who can scold her, the only one who can tell her she’s being stupid about Junko is me.”  
  
_Because I’m the same as her._  
_No, actually I’m much worse_.

“Hm?”  
  
“I’m sure, if one of your sisters turned evil you’re the kind of guy who would say ‘I’ll become the enemy of the whole world for the sake of my sister’s.”  
  
“What exactly did I do to create this image of me? I feel like… people are looking down on me…” Maguro said, suddenly feeling a little bit down. “I just meant, I don’t think people are family just because they’re blood related.”  
  
“Blood connection is the strongest connection of all though, it’s the first one we encounter.”  
  
“Then… what about rather than blood shared, it’s blood shed.”  
  
“So, you’re a guy whose willing to kill for the sake of your little sister’s?”  
  
“Please stop being so mean to me, Matsuda-kun!” Maguro whined. “Both of those sisters have a different mother than me, but just by growing up in the same household. Whether you’re blood related or not, you’ll cause each other pain, and share each other’s pain, just by living. And slowly, you’ll come to understand each other.”

Blood shed.  
Like pink blood cells floating in the air.  
In his last moments of consciousness he saw Enoshima Junko drenched in his blood.  
Falling like raindrops.  
_I just wanted things to stay the same between us._ _  
__I wanted to always be that little boy and little girl at the sand castle._ _  
__Ever since that day, you changed. Little by little._ _  
__I was afraid of being left behind._ _  
__No, from the start I was already behind you._ _  
__My life. Was it all in vain? Did I have any meaning?_ _  
__Junko?_ _  
__Did I grow up into a handsome young man?_ _  
__Did I get any stronger than that stupid kid you knew?_ _  
__Strong enough to be by your side?_ _  
__I wonder if I could have ever shared m weakness with you?_ _  
__Did we share each other’s pain, even a little bit?_ _  
__Hey… say something already._  
  
Matsuda Yasuke bitterly closed his eyes. “Even if you know someone your whole life that doesn’t mean you’ll understand them. She was… the most important person to me you know, and I never understood her once.”

“Well, even my younger sister being a genius beyond comprehension is hard to understand. But you know, even if she was just a normal teenage girl she would probably be pretty hard to understand. Not that I’m saying girls are hard or easy to understand, but just by virtue of being a person separate from yourself, being an individual with their own thoughts and feelings you can’t know everything about them.”  
  
“I don’t want to know what’s on that stupid girl’s mind anyway.”  
  
“But even if you can’t understand someone, you can accept them.”  
  
“I don’t want to accept her either…” Matsuda grinded his teeth as he imagined the silhouette of Enoshima Junko laughing maniacally like she was just some cartoonish villain in the background. However, he relaxed just a little bit hearing those words. “I’d never guess it from looking at you, but your head’s not completely screwed on crooked.”  
  
“That ‘I’d never guess it’ bit was uncalled for. It’s only natural, for an older brother who was born first to want to protect his younger siblings.”  
  
They had been walking on the empty streets for quite awhile. They lapsed into silence until Maguro broke it again.

“Well, we are both in this situation together. It looks like we’re both equally clueless for now.”  
  
“I know what’s going on. It’s probably just one of her dumb killing games. I swear to god if she’s not already dead I’m going to kill her myself when this is all over.”  
  
That was an empty threat.  
Whether it was hating her, or loving her.  
He could not imagine being apathetic to Enoshima Junko in any way.  
He could not think of his own existence without Enoshima Junko.  
Like he was invisible until she had seen him.  
Like she was an alter ego.  
He loved her more than himself.  
He also hated her far more than he hated himself.  
  
“So… don’t be dead, idiot…”  
  
A faint murmur.  
That small hope was all he had. He was pretty much a failure of a protagonist in this series that was all about hope and despair.  
  
Maguro quickly let go of Yasuke’s hand. “Matsuda-kun, just abandon me and run. We’re not family, so it should be easy for you. Run, until you find the people you really want to be family with.”

"What?"   
  
Maguro removed his hand from his neck. A deep purple coloring like a bruise that was slowly eating him from the inside out had spread across it. On his wrist a single bangle was dangling there.  Around that bangle a forbidden action was circling.   
  
_When you see your family, you cannot allow them to escape alive._

Maguro smiled, oddly calm. “You know, my sister’s an overly honest person whose way too easy to influence. It's irresponsible for me as a big brother but can you watch over her?” He was able to smile, just thinking of his family.   
  
Yasuke said nothing. 

"I can't take this body with me. It's too heavy."

Yasuke said nothing.   
  
He just did as Maguro asked and ran away.   
Like it had nothing to do with him.  
This person was not his family after all. 

Maguro was really cool, choosing to die rather than kill someone else.   
I have to think about how cool he was, otherwise I’ll be really sad.  


🦔  


“Goddamnit!”  
  
Matsuda screamed the moment he was out of sight. He had run into an alleyway to hide. He could no longer see nor hear what was happening to Maguro, and he did not want to know anyway. That was why he hated himself so much.  
  
He kicked over a nearby trash can spilling its contents onto the road. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! You piece of crap! Don’t suddenly throw your life away over something so stupid!”  
  
Yasuke knew he was weak.  
He had devoted his entire life to protecting only one person, but he failed at that.  
His desires were so small, he just wanted to be happy with that one person.  
But they were both miserable.  
  
“Like I care! You can all go die for all I care! It has nothing to do with me! I’m a selfish bastard who only thinks about Enoshima Junko!”  
  
Yasuke screamed until his throat was hoarse, but it made no difference. He was not going to go back on his decision. He already knew he was not a hero, nor was he brave, nor could he save others. He had to keep running away and living until he could see those people again.  
  
An utterly passive protagonist.  
A protagonist who could hold nothing in his hands.  
A zero.

Suddenly his spiral of self loathing was interrupted by a scream loud enough to shatter his mood. A girlish scream coming from an alleyway. Matsuda just admitted he was not a hero, nor could he save anyone, but immediately he ran after the screaming girl in trouble.  
  
When he reached the origin of the noise, the first thing he was struck by was the smell of something rotting. For a moment he thought he saw a beautiful flower, but it was just a trick of his eyes.  
  
There was a girl standing atop a corpse like it was nothing. Emukae Mukae. Cowering in front of her was Tsumiki Mikan. There were tears in Tsumiki’s eyes as she stumbled backwards and fell on her behind.  
  
“Matsuda-kun!”

Emukae gave a girlish squee when she recognized him.  
For some reason all of the memories of the past that Kumagawa Misogi had erased with all fiction suddenly came flooding back to him as a result of that dream.  
That was right, at one point in the past, Kumagawa Misogi and this girl tried to help him with Otonashi Ryoko and fight despair.  
  
Emukae clapped her hands together. He heard the sound of burning flesh, her hands looked all burnt up. “That girl isn’t so innocent you know. When she was running away, she pushed this innocent bystander in front of her to protect herself.”  
  
“Yeah, Mikan’s pretty screwed up.”  
  
“H-hey, I’m right here you know. D-don’t bully me.” Mikan whimpered.  
  
Despite that, Matsuda still stepped in front of Mikan. Emukae died once because of him. Just another name to add to his list of sins. He did not need his burden to get any heavier. “Emukae-chan, if you were to kill Tsumiki-san, then you’d only hurt Kumagawa.”

Emukae smiled. “You remember! You remembered that I asked you to call me Emukae-chan! I knew you’d remember! We’re each other’s true love after all, so even if you hate me, even if you forget about me, even if you ridicule me if you believe in love it’ll all work out in the end.”  
  
She looked like a normal girl speaking happily about love. The contrast was too much, like flowers amongst corpses, like life and death, opposites that were never meant to mix.  
  
“Umm… about that. I should have said this awhile ago. Ugh, I’m the worst. Emukae-chan. I don’t love you. I don’t think I can love anybody, sorry.”  
  
“Eh?”  
  
“So please, let’s just give up fighting over who likes who and go search for the others okay?”

He thought the rejection might make her flip into stabby mode, but it was the only thing he could think of to do. The right thing was to let her down gently rather than lead her on. She was better off not loving a person like him anyway.  
  
“Who cares?”  
  
That was not the reaction he expected at all.  
  
“People don’t fall in love because they want to be loved. How selfish. The world is rough in so many ways, nothing ever goes my way. I’m so exhausted you know. Everyday life, what the hell is that? It crumbles away all to easily for me. The rules that were meant to protect others never protected me. I’m so tired of it all. That’s why I want to love someone else. I want to have the feeling that, if that certain person were to come by your side, you can keep moving forward.”

She was covered in scars.  
Except unlike Tsumiki she did not even have the bandages to hide them.  
Her uniform was old and beaten up, almost as if she had been buried in it.  
  
“A girl’s love is pure, you know.”  
  
Matsuda, kept trying to reason with her. He was reminded of the cheshire cat’s quote.  
  
_Of course he’s mad too._ _  
__But I don’t want to go among mad people._ _  
__Oh you can’t help that. Most everyone’s mad here._  
  
Yeah, it was a little hypocritical of him to pretend like he was the sane one here. A mad scientist, and a mad girl in love holding a knife were not that far apart on the madness scale.

“But, Kumagawa-kun really does care about you. If you were to kill Tsumiki-san you’d be hurting him like everybody else hurt you.”

“No, no, you don’t get it Matsuda-kun.” Emukae said, waving her hand back and forth imitating Kumagawa. “Do you know why Kumagawa-kun is always saying that minus show affection through betrayal? It’s because, we minus have no friends. We don’t know how other people are feeling, because we’re so obsessed with our own pain. The only way we know that we’ve gotten close to someone is when we hurt them. Otherwise we’d feel no warmth at all.”  
  
“Kumagawa-kun is your senpai, you really want to disobey him like that?”  
  
“That’s okay. I know because he’s my senpai he’ll forgive me.” Emukae smiled, her face wrinkled like it was rotting too. “I’m going to hurt him again and again so I can be forgiven by him again and again. Then, things will go back to the way they were! He’ll forget about Enoshima, and Tsumiki-san, and everybody else and go back to being my senpai!”

She just wanted to go back.  
She wanted to go back to the days before everything went wrong.  
Matsuda could understand, because that was all he wanted too.  
All he wanted was something completely impossible.

Junko was never going to go back to being the childhood friend he knew.  
He could never take back his failure with Otonashi Ryoko.  
He could not even go back to the carefree days he spent in the neurology lab, with Emukae, Kumagawa, and Ryoko.  
That was all over now.  
  
Matsuda refused to move from in front of Tsumiki. “You shouldn’t take advantage of him like that.”  
  
“You’re no better. You murdered him twice, and yet you act like you want to be his friend. Kumagawa-kun forgives everybody, that’s why that sniveling little girl clings to him.”  
  
“M-me?” Mikan said, her hand grabbing at her hair. “P-picking on a weak person like me, does it make you feel good? Kumagawa-kun wouldn’t forgive you.”  
  
“Weak? You have no right to call yourself weak. You’re competent. Useful. Talented. Let me give you a taste of true helplessness.”  Emukae tightened her fingers around the blade of her knife. She held it by the blade instead of the handle, like she was trying to hurt herself.  
  
“Emukae-chan! If you kill her you’re going to have to kill me first.” Matsuda announced.  
  
“Okay, then.”  
  
“The hell do you mean, okay then!?”

“Well, if I kill you then, then my feelings would go with you. Once you were dead I could keep on loving you forever. You tried to do the same thing, didn’t you?”  
  
“N-no, I didn’t…”  
  
“You tried to end it all with Ryoko-chan. Didn’t you just want to keep loving her in the one sided way forever? While she was alive, she kept getting in the way of your feelings. People become so much cuter when they’re in love, that’s why I fell for you. Isn’t it cute?”  
  
“It’s not cute at all.”  
  
Unnaturally, Emukae jerked her head to the side stretching the stitches around her neck. “Really? I think it’s cute. It’s totally cute. Tell me I’m cute, tell me, tell me, tell me.”

“A-are you really going to fight her for my sake?”  
  
Matsuda could see.  
Stars of hope, in Mikan’s eyes.  
As if she had been waiting her whole life for someone to stand up for her like this.

“Hell no! We’re running away!”

He almost felt bad for disappointing her.  
Matsuda grabbed Tsumiki by her bandaged hand and ran in the opposite direction. His white lab coat trailed behind him in the darkness  
  
It was an unbelievably long night for him, and it had just barely gotten started.  
He still had no idea where he was.

And more importantly, he had no idea what he wanted.  
Matsuda Yasuke.  
He was confronted by twisted familial love.And twisted romantic love.  
What did he want from Junko?  
Or was Kumagawa right that he never wanted anything from her in the first place.  
He did not know, so he ran.  
He died once, but Kumagawa punished him by bringing him back to life cruelly forcing him to live. All he knew was that he had to continue living.  
  
Matsuda Yasuke was unaware that this game was not a killing game, but rather a survival game. That was why even a zero like him who wanted to keep living without any reason could be protagonist.

 

 **[Matsuda Yasuke - Passed]**   **  
****[Kurokami Maguro - Failed]**


	3. A Real Conversation Between Fakes

**Day 1  
Mission 1  
Player: Izuru Kamukura Hinata Hajime   
  
**

Kamukura Izuru dreamed.    
In his dream he saw a body on the floor.   
It was his former self.   
They were locked in a room together.   
He was the murderer.    
  
Kamukura Izuru dreamed.    
Matsuda peeled off the top of his cranium like he was opening it with a can opener.    
Matsuda had long, pale fingers.   
If he was not a neurologist he could have been a piano player.   
He reached into Kamukura’s empty skull.   
And pulled on all the strings.   
He made beautiful music that echoed inside of his empty self.   
Then he got his fingers all tangled up in the meat of Izuru’s brain like it was spaghetti.    
  
Both as one, one as both.   
One is both, both are one.    
Hinata Hajime and Kamukura Izuru.    
He and he pass their time in the same body.    
Passing the dull time.   
Passing the empty space.    
Utterly bored with only each other for company.    
No one name belongs to either of them.   
Opposite minds in the same body.   
Different but the same.    
Minds of blak and white, of yin and yang.   
On the obverse face is the normal boy.    
He hopes.    
He wishes to be somebody.    
On the reverse face is an abnormal thing.   
He despairs.    
He knows he is nothing.    
One is Jekyll and the other is Hyde.   
One is Dorian Gray  and the other is his Portrait.    
Tales told over and over again since the dawn of time.   
Dwelling within all of us an inescapable shadow.   
Even if the shadows seems to be your opposite it’s really just you all along.    
  
_ Here am I. _   
_ The divided self.  _ _   
_ _ The world outside may be beautiful but I love this cell.  _

Kamukura Izuru looked up in his dream and heard a familiar voice. As always that voice was nagging him. “Did you forget how to dress yourself too? Jeez, do I have to do everything for you?” 

“I forgot everything about my former self. You should know since you’re the one who performed the procedure. I am under the impression that it was decided from the start I would be rid of my weak personality so it would not interfere with the learning process.” Kamukura answered his caretaker in an overly literal fashion.    
  
Yasuke clicked his teeth in annoyance. This human specimen in front of him was rather strange. He considered himself aloof, distant, and with unreadable emotions to others. He looked like he was hiding his true self from the whole world and would only ever show it to one person, but in Kamukura’s opinion he was an open book. “Well, you’re smart so you should be able to figure it out. Get a move on already, I know the adults are stupid but they’re not that stupid. They’ll figure us out if we take too long.” 

On the bed in his plain room that still looked utterly unlived in, Yasuke had piled up a set of folded clothes. There was a suit and tie, and button up shirt and undergarments. Kamukura did not care what he wore or how he looked, hence why his hair had grown out so long already and he wore the same blue hospital robe every day. However, Yasuke was insisting.    
  
Most of the other scientists were like insects buzzing in his ears. He did not so much as obey them as believe that if he pretended to cooperate than they would stop bothering him. They were not so much human beings, as silhouettes, with their faces hidden by the goggles and glasses they wore. However, no matter how much he tried to tune Yasuke out in the same way it was impossible. Kamukura simply decided he was too annoying to ignore. 

  
He undid his robe and then let it fall off his body. Then, he stepped into the boxers first as he started to dress himself. He noticed Yasuke was looking away, shielding his face with his hand. Curious, from his constant lovesick mutterings Kamukura assumed Yasuke only had eyes for one person. Whoever it was who had Yasuke’s heart in a cage Kamukura never wished to meet that person.    
  
He buttoning up the white collared shirt and then pulled the suit jacket on in one fluid motion. He had never done this before, but it had worked out exactly as he had visualized in the book he read. However, the book had not included instructions for tying a tie. With the cloth wrapped around his neck, Kamukura hesitated for a moment. He was expected to be perfect, so he had no idea how to ask for help.    
  
If he did perhaps he would bang on the bars of this prison cell and scream for someone to let him go, rather than silently waiting for something to happen.    
  
  


As if picking up on him, Yasuke grabbed his tie and did it for him. Yasuke who always had something to say, was oddly quiet as he placed his hands at Kamukura’s neck. He felt the brush of Yasuke’s fingers against his skin. Kamukura wondered, when Yasuke was this quiet did he want to scream too?

Yasuke seemed to be somebody who always spoke his mind on the outermost layer, but when it came to the important things he left them unsaid.   
  
Kamukura looked down at the loose and sloppy knot that Yasuke had tied around his neck. As uneven as the tie that was hanging loosely off of Yasuke’s own outfit. “...Terrible.” Kamukura muttered. 

  
“You’ve developed quite a mouth. Where the hell did you even get that from?”   
  
“That’s a mystery even the talent of the Ultimate Detective could not solve.” 

“Jeez, you’ve learned sarcasm now too? What the hell are they even teaching you here.” 

  
Kamukura dressed in the uniform of the reserve course was able to sneak out with Yasuke’s assistance. It was Yasuke’s plan to show him the world outside that one little room. Kamukura would not call it a prison break, because he had no intention of leaving his cell for good. It was just a field trip, a learning experience. That was right even if he survived the continuous experimentation and countless surgeries, the only future that lies ahead of him was being used as a tool for all of these people ‘for the benefit of humanity.’

His future was utterly predictable, ergo, boring. That was why he had no interest in the outside world. Yet, Yasuke insisted he go anyway and Kamukura had finally complied to shut up his incessant nagging.    
  
The two of them stood outside together pretending to be reserve course students, so as to not attract attention. Kamukura did not cry upon seeing the outside world for the first time, he did not smile, he did not have a dramatic change of heart or anything like that. He merely observed as he always did, through dull, listless eyes.    
  
In the distance, members of class 77-B were arguing amongst each other. The boys were picking teams for basketball. A pink haired boy with a punkish look, looked entirely terrified that he was going to be picked last. He kept looking to a blonde girl in the audience hoping she would cheer for him. There was a white haired boy entirely certain he would be picked last, and he seemed to be content with that already resigning himself to a member of the audience.    
  
“How old am I?” Kamukura asked breaking the silence.    
  
“A baby.”

“Let me rephrase as to avoid that sharp tongue of yours, how old is this body?”

“Hmm, well if you were enrolled here you’d be in the 77th class. At a normal school you’d be in your final year of high school.”   
  
“Are you classmates with them?”   
  
“We’re in the same year, but we’re divided into different classes. Oh, I see I guess if you really were talented you’d never want to end up in the same class as a terrible rascal like me.” 

Kamukura changed the subject, because if he left Yasuke to self deprecate he would just keep going all on his own. “I don’t understand the actions you’re taking. Are you trying to atone?” 

  
Yasuke looked back on Kamukura’s always serious face, away from the basketball game that was just starting. “No. I’ve already decided what I did to you was unforgivable.”    
  
“You don’t expect other people to forgive you?”   
  
“No. I’m the one who won’t forgive myself. I’m the one who’s mad at hell as myself.” 

  
“You’re just as self absorbed as everybody else, how boring.” Kamukura commented, he was freer with his tongue around Yasuke he just stayed silent and played the obedient doll around the other scientists. Still, seeing the outside world had not brought about the change in him he was expecting. He looked at the academy with it’s walls that divided the reserve course and the Ultimate Talents and saw just another cage. 

  
“Hey, Kamukura. If it were possible for me to undo everything that happened to your brain and bring you back, would you want that? They got me working on a new program with Gekkogahara and…” 

“No.”   
  
“Aren’t you scared? That you’re not you, anymore?” 

“Why would I not be me? Even though I was born in somebody else’s body, and I don’t know what happened to this body in its previous eighteen years of life… to touch with my hands, to see with my own eyes, I want to feel just like you do.” 

Kamukura slowly reached out. He touched Yasuke’s face and caressed it the same way a blind man would, as if he wanted to memorize every curve and wrinkles with his hands. Yasuke bit his own tongue hard enough to taste blood. He was the one who made Kamukura like this, and just when Kamukura was finally getting used to being himself he offered to take it all away. Like he was playing god. What a stupid god, indeed. 

“Sorry…”    
  
“Even if you apologize you won’t be forgiven.”   
  
“You’re such a goddamned optimist you know that.”   
  
“The pattern of hope is predictable. The process may vary, but the result is always the same. Boring… predictable hope.”   
  
“You know they’re gonna shit bricks if they hear the Ultimate Hope talking like that.” Yasuke sighed, he felt a familiar twinge in his chest hearing Kamukura speak in such an empty way. He wondered if just like that girl, there was nothing he could do for this person either. “You’re not afraid of the future at all?”   
  
“Everything proceeds as I predicted. It’s possible there might be minor variations, but those are insignificant ripples. I can predict what will happen after the project is complete as well… However…”    
  
Eventually Yasuke would disappear, he would either be disposed as a witness or his conscience would get the better of him. Kamukura did not voice that prediction out loud because he did not want it to be true. He wanted the annoying existence of Matsuda Yasuke to continue to pester him.    
  
“You know he was kind of like that too…”   
  
“Who?”   
  
“This boy I knew once. He was super antisocial, and didn’t get along well with others, but at the same time he was constantly comparing himself to everyone he met. It’s like he wanted to be anybody else other than himself.” 

“I can’t help it. I feel like I’m lacking. My heart must be made of clockwork. It keeps ticking, because the machinery inside tells it to, but not for any other reason.” Kamukura said as he put his hand on his chest. For the first time Yasuke did not just see emptiness in his eyes, it was a longing to be filled. “Was I really that similar, to that friend of yours?”   
  
“He wasn’t my friend. I keep telling you I only have one friend… but nah, you guys were different as day and night. Well, you could be brothers…” 

To have brothers.   
To have classmates.   
To have a family.   
To be somebody, in the eyes of someone else. 

Suddenly, the scenery changed before his eyes and Yasuke was no longer on the bench next to him. Rather than watching from the audience he was onstage now. He sat on bench waiting for his turn to play basketball with the others. Kazuichi Souda appeared before him extending an open hand.    
  
Before he could take it, he heard a naysaying voice behind him, like their talent was the Ultimate Naysayer. “Hinata-kun from the Reserve Course, what are you doing here?”   
  
“What? I’m playing basketball. They were short one person so they asked me to step in.” Most of their talents had nothing to do with sports anyway, Gundham might look intimidating but he was just a skinny nerd underneath all that makeup and dark clothing. Hinata thought it was okay. He unbuttoned his shirt just enough so that he could pull it over his head.    
  
Komaeda let out a soft gasp, as he continued to watch him in the process of getting changed into his uniform. Hinata had no idea why he was staring so hard. It was like he was trying to figure out a puzzle with his eyes, right in front of him. “I see.” Komaeda finally said in a quite voice. “So you’re going to be a stepping stone for all the talented people to shine?”    
  
“That’s not why I’m here…”    
  
“Then why are you here? Don’t tell me you think you could stand on equal ground with them.”     
  
They were all somebody, but who was he? A sea of white nothingness. A nondescript. An extra character. He was just a reserve meant to stay in the background. He knew all of this, but… “It’s true I’m different from the rest of them, but…”   
  
Hinata hesitated his uniform only pulled half down around his body, as he stopped to talk with Komaeda. He wondered why he was always taking time to talk with this person even though their conversations got nowhere at all.    
  
“But, what? There are no buts about it.” Komaeda said, his face turning into a nasty sneer and his eyes looking down on him. Looking at Hinata as if he were nothing.   
  
But that was not true.    
It was a childish lie. There was no way he could ever look at Hinata as if he were not there.   
Because he was always watching Hinata.    
  
“No, maybe you don’t understand it but… The game’s about to start, so I’m gonna go. If you’re here to cheer take your seat.” 

  
Machines of flesh behaving in predictable ways.    
That was all other people were.    
A boy with a clockwork heart, and doll-like lips.    
That’s all he was. 

And yet there was one person he could never quite understand.   
  
“I could never get bored talking of you…” A small smile threatened to show on Izuru’s lips, as he watched the scene play in front of him. Unlike the previous scene it was not one of his memories, but rather a fantasy. A past that could have been.    
  
Then he wondered, staring at Hinata Hajime as he finished putting on his uniform to go play basketball with the others. Why did things not turn out this way? Why did he not just try to be friends with them as a reserved course student?

  
He looked at the people ambling around him. Kumagawa and Matsuda were competing over who could win a stuffed bear for Junko. Zenkichi was trying to race Makoto, but both of them lost to Mukuro. Such a normal, boring scene reminded him of the inconsequential world that Komaeda had dreamed of in the Neo World Program. Komaeda and him seemed so different, they were always arguing different, incompatible point of views, who knew they could both dream of the same world…?    
  
“If only you were here…”     
  
He climbed the bleachers and sat next to Komaeda in the audience. When Hinata pushed himself to steal the basketball and rush to the other side of the court, his shirt was pushed up his torso revealing how much he was working his muscles underneath. They were pulled taut underneath his skin. As Komaeda noticed that detail, his mouth fell open, his lips dried and cracked slowly pulled apart from each other.    
  
Hinata wanted to keep dreaming a little longer.   
But he figured dreaming forever would be boring.    
  
🦔

His eyes slowly peeled open.   
In the mirror he saw chained to a wall, there was a figure with oily black hair which fell over and covered his face, two arms that looked longer and out of proportion with his body, and a body so thin he looked like a wireframe doll. His far too long legs hung uselessly there as well not touching the ground. He looked like a ghost floating above everything and not making contact. 

Hinata was sure if he had stumbled upon anybody else looking like this, he would think they were some monster chained away in a dungeon. A pale imitation of life rather than something living. However, Hinata knew very well this was his own body. He had been living in the body of Izuru Kamukura for awhile now.     
  
The mastermind must have discarded him after she was finished using him in her stage play. He came to that conclusion right away. Perhaps for anybody else, being chained to a wall the only fate that would await them was slowly starving to death. 

  
Hinata pushed his arm to its absolute limit and then popped the joint for his wrist and elbow at the same time. He slid out of the iron cuffs around his wrist as smoothly as a snake would. He pulled the same trick with his other wrists. When he escaped by his scales, he popped his joints back into place and snapped his fingers on both hands.    
  
He was trying to look cool.    
It didn’t work.    
A moment later he remembered that Kumagawa could pull such a trick to easily escape being tied up, and he decided it was definitely not cool.    
  
Either way what a boring way to keep him contained. If she wanted to lock him away she could have at least put some kind of puzzle mechanism to the room. Then again, puzzles were equally boring once he worked out the details in his head.    
  
The room he woke up in was a blank white room that reminded him of his old bedroom in the abandoned school building. The only furniture was a full length mirror. Hanging off the mirror was a green jacket whose sleeves and tails were filled with wear and tear. Hinata reached for it. Only to feel something tugging against his ankle. He noticed both of his feet had been chained to the wall too. He stepped out of his shoe and dislocated his ankle. Before he could get to the other, suddenly the door burst open and someone flew into the room.    
  
Hinata saw snow white hair, and a pure white suit, his whole silhouette shone bright silver like he was a knight walking in the modern day. In any other less twisted story, this man would be the hero.    
  
He immediately drew a sword and cut the last chain binding Hinata free. Hinata moved his foot and noticed he now had a bangle around his ankle, with a few links of chain hanging off.   
  
“I didn’t need to be saved right then. You’re just being annoying,” Hinata said in a cold voice, sounding more like Kamukura because he was in a bad mood.    
  
“My dear boy. Do you know who you’re dealing with-”   
  
“Shut up. I know it’s you Imposter-kun.” 

  
“W-wha? My imitation of Munakata was flawless. You really do possess such talent to see through my right away.”    
  
  


“That and, you’re about one hundred kilograms heavier than the real Munakata.” Hinata finished buttoning up his shirt and straightening his black jacket. He finally reached out for the green jacket. His fingers curled in hesitation, before touching it. If he were alone, he would spend longer trying to see if any trace of Komaeda was left on his trademark jacket, but somebody had already come to annoy him. He swung it around his shoulders without hesitation.    
  
It was warm.   
If he closed his eyes he could pretend Komaeda was embracing him from behind.   
There was no time for that.    
  
Kamukura took note of one last thing before leaving the room. Both he and Imposter-kun had bangles around their wrists with digital instructions circling around them. As soon as the both walked into the hallway, he deduced the two of them were inside an abandoned shopping mall.    
  
In front of them a toy shop had been completely vandalized. Blocks, stuffed animals, childish puzzles, were all spilling out on the ground like the store had vomited them up through its broken windows. Kamukura stepped on one of the toys.    
  
He was hit by a nostalgic feeling.    
That was right he did live in an empty white room, but Matsuda always snuck in toys for him like this. No matter how many puzzles he solved, Matsuda would grumble and find him some more. 

“You’re… Izuru Kamukura.” The one who was supposed to lead the remnants of despair from the shadows, the accomplice to Enoshima Junko. With Munakata’s face, Imposter-kun watched him with hesitation. “But… you’re not really Izuru Kamukura are you. You’re just some reserve course kid.” 

  
“Who told you that?” It’s not like he was embarrassed. Okay, he was a little embarrassed. But also, Hinata only remembered telling his story to Fuyuhiko, Peko, Chiaki and Gundham, with class 77-B fractured the way it was there was no way they could have told anybody else.    
  
“What’s with that face? You look like an embarrassing secret got revealed.”    
  
“Mm.”    
  
“I won’t point my finger and laugh at you. That’d be hypocritical for me of all people to point out the fakes…” As he said that Imposter-kun grabbed the silver wig he was wearing and threw it off of his head, and smeared the makeup on his face. Underneath was black slicked back hair, and an utterly featureless face that could belong to anybody.    
  
They walked past an electronics store. There were piles and piles of tvs stacked up in front of the window. All of them at once were displaying the same message, like they had been forcibly hacked by an outside signal. The message that played across were the rules of the game Monokuma Hunter. 

Hinata’s lips pulled tight and his brow pinched in displeasure. Just reading the name Monokuma brought bothersome thoughts of that woman to mind. Even if they were on the same side by technicality he was never going to get along with that girl.    
  
Hinata was perfectly content walking along in silence. Besides, it was awkward for him meeting new people. The moment he saw them he started to compare himself to them.    
  
Imposter-kun broke the silence. “Kamukura-kun, do you consider yourself a student of Hope’s Peak?”   
  
“Why ask such a pointless question?”    
  
“Well, I’m only someone who imitates talent but just from looking at you I can tell you’re certainly someone who can be called Ultimate. So, do you think you belong there?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Surely, you have more thoughts on the matter than that..”   
  
“Mm.” Talking was. Such a chore. He only wanted to talk to his friends who gave him unpredictable responses. But, Hinata supposed this person was also a part of that class. That class that he always looked upon from the sidelines with envy. “It’s not a matter of having talent or not. I just don’t feel like I belong among those people. It’s a difference between who I am and who they are.”    
  
“That’s how I felt too. I lived with them, and went to class with them every day, and yet even if I was amongst the crowd I never once felt I belonged among those people…” Imposter-kun’s all too plain and unrecognizable face, seemed tinged with sorrow. “I’m a fake just like you.”   
  
“No. The talent to impersonate other people is still a talent you’ve honed your entire life. You’ve stilled dedicated yourself towards something. You still are somebody, even if you’re someone who desires to be other people.”    
  
“Because I have talent, right?”   
  
Hinata bit his lips in frustration. He was not going to say that, necessarily. He was supposed to be the one predicting what others would say.    
  
It occurred to Hinata that the man in front of him was just trying to relate to him on a personal level. Hinata was just being stubborn as ever. 

“I think, if I had approached your class as a reserve course student. If I just told them that I wanted to be their friend as I was. If I was accepted by those people, then things would have turned out a little differently.” 

Hinata remembered his dream where Kamukura never existed, and he and Komaeda simply argued as a reserve course student and Ultimate Lucky Student. His mismatched eyes were looking in two different directions, one in the past, and the other into a dream, and because of that he could not see what was right in front of him.    
  
“Well, things might have gone exactly the same as well. It’s not like Hope’s Peak was going to give up on the Kamukura Project. If you turned down the offer then some other unlucky Reserve Course kid would have been the prototype.”   
  
“You’re right. I might have caused some ripples, but the path would have remained predictably the same. It’s nice being reminded my choices are even more meaningless than I thought they were.”    
  
Imposter-kun suddenly stopped and looked back at him.    
  
“That’s not what I meant to say. It’s something like, it could have been anybody, if you didn’t choose to become him you would have just been replaced, so… doesn’t that make your choice matter even more?”   
  
The more meaningless your choices seem.   
As your pathways close down and you see less and less branching options.    
It just makes the choices you do make more important.    
  
“You know everything went wrong. I never got accepted for my true self. I lied to my classmates the whole time. Then I sabotaged the school, but I don’t regret going there, you know?”    
  
“...?” Hinata detected something off about Imposter-kun’s tone.    
  
“I finally remembered my real home but, I choose that place as my home. Listen, the secret of this game is-” Before he could finish that sentence, Imposter-kun coughed up blood. His whole face spasmed in shock. Kamukura saw something purple like a bruise traveling up his face and slowly spreading.    
  
Imposter-kun fell.   
Kamukura moved faster than gravity, and caught him in his arms effortlessly. “What are you doing? If you die this is all pointless.”    
  
“I have to tell you… Even if it costs me my life. The secret of the -” He hacked blood again, staining Kamukura’s expressionless face. “Th-they’re just like me.”

  
Imposter-kun’s eyes were somewhere else. He looked like he had been struggling against something terrible a moment ago, and now his face found peace. Words fell from his lips like they were the last drops of his life. 

  
“I always wanted to be a part of that class. Hey, Kamukura-kun, if you have all the talent in the world can you protect that class for me? Even if you become the enemy of the whole world…” He reached up and touched Hinata’s face. An imitation of human affection. From one fake to another. It was not like either of them could reach out and touch another human being.  “I just want to go back to that class…”    
  
His whole body went limp.    
Hinata reached forward and brushed his hand over his eyes flicking both of the eyelids shut.    
_ Cannot speak of Shiranui.  _

_ Failed.  _

🦔   
  
He felt nothing at all about the passing of a human being right in front of him.    
Especially a stranger.   
Imposter-kun was a stranger to everybody in the world.   
But really, so was Hinata.    
Even before he became Kamukura, even when he was like everyone else he was a stranger.    
  
He felt no despair or sadness at his passing. Yet, when he finally made it outside the mall he slammed his hand into a telephone pole wordlessly. Hard enough to break  one of his fingers.    
  
“I have the talents of the Ultimate Pharmacist, the Ultimate Chemist, I should have been able to do something. If only I wasn’t surrounded by nothing but damn toys.”    
  
He growled in a low voice.   
He looked like a panther in pitch black darkness.    
At the time when Imposter was dying in front of him, the only things in reach were the toys littered all over the floor from the broken toy store window.    
  


All the talent in the world and he could not protect a single person in front of him. He was still useless Hinata Hajime no matter how much his body, or his mind changed. It was as inescapable as trying to run away from his own heart beat. 

  
Even though he had a bad habit of dwelling on his own entropy, drowning in it, the moment Kamukura heard a scream he moved. It was easy to deduce the location, and to move silently through the night based on the talents he was using.    
  
  


He saw a pair of scissors, gleaming in the night, rushing towards a girl who dressed like a housekeeper. Hinata moved first before the scissors could reach their predictable path. He caught the wielder’s wrist and bent it in the wrong way to break his momentum.    
  
“An Ultimate Murderous Fiend? What a boring talent. Unfortunately, I have that too.” 

  
Takumi Hijirihara, immediately sensed this guy was bad news the moment he audibly heard his wrist snap. He slipped out of the guy’s grip, and jumped backwards. With his still functional hand he grabbed his face. The passionate expression he was wearing a moment ago was replaced with anxiety.    
  
“This is way too many people. I don’t want to be looked at. It’s nerve wracking.” He threw the scissors to the side like he had gotten bored of them. “You look like somebody who could kill without feeling anything at all, not a single drop of passion. What kind of monster are you?”    
  
“Eh?” Not that Kamukura was disagreeing. He was frankenstein’s monster to be specific, but. “You just tried to cut someone’s throat out. How am I the monster?”    
  
“I guess, if you save the screaming girl then you’re the hero.” He went from anxious, to just looking tired. “I don’t want to explain myself. I’m no good at talking to people anyway.”

  
Takumi stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned around. This guy, what kind of person was he? He just seemed like a genuine weirdo. 

  
Before Kamukura could chase after him he noticed the woman he had protected had grabbed his arm from behind. Hinata turned back to look at her. A woman wearing an apron, her hair was no longer that bright flaming color, but had become a much duller brown. Overall she had a sadder look to her.    
  
Yukizome Chisa.    
  
“Hinata, is that you? Is that really you?”   
  
The teacher who tried to look out for him even though he was only a reserve course student. The one who once soothed the wound on his face, when Juzo punched his pride in. 

“I looked everywhere for you when you went missing. I thought you were just another one of the victims, that I would never see you again.”   
  
Hinata did not know how to answer her question.    
He certainly was Hinata Hajime.   
He was also Izuru Kamukura. 

She only wanted to see one of them. 

“Y-yukizome-sensei.”    
  
He finally stuttered out in a voice choking back emotion. 

“It’s a long and boring story. Can I tell it to you later?”

  
He knew he was just avoiding the issue. Just like he was avoiding her gaze with his gaze, one red, one green. She only wanted to see the human boy not the inhuman monster he had become.    
  
Chisa immediately got right in his face, puffing her cheeks out. Hinata who drew a clear line between himself and others, was always amazed by people who could step over this boundary so easily, like Yukizome and Chiaki. “Don’t say that about yourself! If it’s your story, I’m sure it’s interesting.”    
  
There was no winning against people like that. Kamukura decided to surrender. He brought his eyes to his feet. “Can we talk while we walk at least?”    
  
Kamukura followed closely in her shadow. He felt like he was being led along by a teacher. Some of his old memories were restored, so he had the faint notion of what it was like being a primary schooler following the teacher in a line like a row of ducks.    
  
“I’m sorry for making you defend me even though I’m the adult. If only I had a more useful talent than housekeeping, right?”    
  
“Don’t call your talent useless, Yukizome-sensei.” After all she had dedicated herself to becoming somebody. Automatically that made her better than him. Besides, Munakata was always swinging a katana around to fight and that had absolutely nothing to do with being a student council president. “I’ve always wanted to ask someone this… when I asked Chiaki, she just said it was because she liked games’. Just because of that. Hey, sensei, why did you want to become the Ultimate Housekeeper?”    
  
Hinata’s view on this matter were shockingly (not so shockingly) similiar to Komaeda’s. People were either talented or they were not. They were either somebody or they were nobody. All or nothing, black and white thinking. The snow white Komaeda, the black as ink spreading on the paper Kamukura.    
  
“Munakata…”

“Huh? Didn’t you not meet him until you were already at Hope’s Peak?”   
  
“Nobody knows this, not even Munakata himself but I actually met him long before that. However, even if we crossed each other in the hallway we were world’s apart. He never even noticed someone like me. Even back in middle school everyone already knew that he was heading towards greatness. When I saw him look straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wanted to become the kind of person he would acknowledge.”   
  
“That sounds… spiteful.”   
  
“Well you know what they say! The greatest hate springs forth from the greatest love! Or is it supposed to be the other way around!”    
  
“Y-yukizome-sensei!?”    
  
Though, considering his relationship with Komaeda, Hinata did not really have any room to be questioning her.    
  
“I wanted to stand on the same stage as him one day. I didn’t know how, so I devoted myself to becoming an ideal. The only thing I was good at was housework, so I got really good at that. A girl that can take care of the home, sounds like the ideal woman right?” 

She meant that as a joke, but there was something off about it to Kamukura.   
He did not press her.   
He was keeping secrets as well.    
  
Just then Yukizome leaned in again. She was watching his face. Perhaps she was reading some emotion that even Kamukurawas not aware was there. “Hi. Na. Ta. Kun. Aren’t you going to tell me, how your hair became like that? What happened to your eyes? Why you’ve suddenly become such a strong young man.”    
  
“Erm, puberty…” 

  
“Munakata got quite handsome as well when he got older, but I don’t think that explains all of it.”   
  
Hinata was not telling her, because he did not want to. He did not want to admit that he was the one who betrayed Yukizome, and turned her class to despair. He did not want to tell her that he was the one who killed Chiaki, her favorite student. Even though he sat at the fountain and played video games with her so many times.  

Chisa was kind. She might even see him as a victim of the Kamukura project, but he refused that role. He would not play victim, he would only ever accept that he was the perpetrator. 

He wanted to be somebody. He wanted to be someone others would look at.   
But right at this moment.    
He did not want to be seen.    
  
**[Pass -Hinata Hajime]**   
**[Fail - Ultimate Imposter]**


	4. Only a Diamond Can Polish a Diamond

“May you be happy forever, Misogi.”   
  


『Bye, bye. Human.』   
  
It should have ended with that goodbye.    
That was how these things went.   
She had been able to face her own death with a smile on her face wiping away a tear from her eye. She had been brave. She had been strong. Then, why did she feel this way? 

  
Kurokami Medaka followed the imposter Junko down the hallway, utterly silent staring at her hand. She looked up and saw the rocket ship that was going to be her execution. Even if by all improbable odds she destroyed the moon before it could crash land on earth she would die in space. Even Goku could not breathe in space.    
  
“Can I ask you one last thing? Why do you hate me so badly.”    
  
“It’s because you were born a somebody.”    
  
“Because I was born with that thing called talent?”   
  
“No, talent has nothing to do with anything. You were born with a family, a name to call your own. Even normal, utterly unremarkable people who just exist as cogs in the machine are somebody’s. Everybody is a somebody, well except for me…”    
  
“Who are you then? I’m going to die soon, so you can tell me.”   
  
“I’m just a plain old ordinary girl.” The Fake Enoshima Junko’s face plastered on a smile. “There’s nothing special motivating me. I’m not someone who can be a special anything.”   
  
Suddenly her mood changed, as if she had gotten bored she threw her arms up in the air and began to stomp off. Before she did, she danced around a little bit, spinning and then stopping as she jerked her head back to Kurokami Medaka.    
  
“Well, then…I’ll be leaving now. You can just die or whatever. There are still a few people out there that I’ve gotta fuck up.”

 

Medaka got the sense why the other was leaving her alone. It was more cruel to make Medaka march toward her own death willingly out of a sense of obligation than to force her into it. Left alone in the room Medaka went back to staring at her hands. She looked like she was trying to figure out some invisible math problem whose answers were just out of reach.    
  
“Oh, that’s right. I’m going to die.”    
  
She said it as if it had finally dawned on her.   
_ Eh?  _ _  
_ _ Ah.    _ _  
_ _ No.    _ _  
_ _ Am I going to die? _ _  
_ _ I see.  _ _  
_ _ Good bye, Zenkichi.  _ _  
_ _ No, no.  _ _  
_ _ I don’t get it. I don’t get it. _ _  
_ _ Why’d it turn out like this? _ _  
_ _ Why’d I... _

 

She could not accept it calmly like a hero. She could not resolve herself to be the sacrifice for the sake of everybody else’s happiness. Even though it’s what she thought she wanted for most of her life. For so long she even thought it was the reason she had been born. She had brushed against death so many times, but each time it did not even seem real to her like she was watching the events play out in a movie rather than real life.    
  
Kurokami Medaka stared at her hands.    
They were shaking. That was what surprised her so much. She buried her face in those shaking hands as if trying to hide away something shameful.   
“I don’t want to die…”    
A whisper.    
“Why was I even born in the first place?”    
A shout.   
But no one was around to listen. All her life she had surrounded herself with people to distract herself from her own loneliness, but now when it was finally time to end it she was all alone.   
  
“To think that the fear of the sky falling was once thought to be absurd…Well it would be a fitting death for someone like me who thinks so highly of herself, to come crashing back to earth.” She stared up at the moon as if it was some incomprehensible thing. Medaka was such an unnatural girl it was like she was born without a shadow. “I could just do nothing. Then, both me and the fake Junko would die.”

 

She fell back, as if gravity had suddenly become too heavy for her and standing was too much. Perhaps the earth was telling her not to leave its orbit. No, it wasn’t that. The earth was indifferent to her. Her legs were just shaking too much.    
  
“No, maybe I alone would survive even the end of the world.” She crossed her arms over her legs, drawing her knees closer to herself. “But, even if that happens it’s all the same. I don’t want to be alone.”    
  
If she died, she would be alone.   
If she decided selfishly to live, she would be alone too.    
Her shaking was getting so bad, she could hear bells ringing in her ears louder than any other noise. She felt a funeral in her brain. Then, reasoning broke, and she dropped down, plummeting further, further.    
  
“Huh… What is this vibration? My body? Is trembling… It won’t stop…” Kurokami Medaka, spoiled brat, had never been this afraid before. She had never lost control of herself to the point where she could not control her fear. The reason she had been staring at her hands for so long, was because of utter disbelief. She was unable to recognize her own emotions, if she heard the sound of her own heartbeat she probably would not recognize it either.    
  
“I wonder if I’ll be able to meet mother again. Ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha. Ha.” She laughed in a broken and disjointed manner. There was no need to start talking to her now because she would see her soon, but she still murmured underneath her breath as a last wish. “Mother, I wonder if I’d grew up in the way you’d hoped.”    
  
A sorrowful life, never once was she able to live as herself.    
She still did not know who she was.    
Was she even going to die as herself?    
  
“What’s all this? How boring.”    
  
Kurokami Medaka saw red.    
Redder than blood (which was pink now).    
Overkilled Red.    
A laughing red tigress.    
  
Red.   
Like a matador’s cloth billowing in front of her.    
Passion, victory, dominance, love, fervor, and above all else strength.    
A woman whose long silk like hair looked like someone had spilled expensive wine on the top of her head, with a single strand of yellow in her bangs that was like lightning striking down.    
  
When she was called boring, Medaka thought for a moment that Junko had come to save her, but rather the redder than red Aikawa Jun was standing in front of her in the ruined hospital. “A-Aikawa…? I’m amazed… You followed me all this way did you? Did you want to see an end to the Medaka arc?”    
  
“It’s Jun. I just had some free time between jobs and thought it would be interesting.” Suddenly, Jun’s mood changed and she responded in a rather tsundere like way, “D-don’t suddenly assume I think you’re an interesting member of the human species or anything…” 

 

“I-I’m sorry. I’m showing you an unsightly side of me.” Medaka gritted her teeth to try to stop the shaking. She looked like someone who was smiling while at the point of tears. “The truth is I’m going to die soon, so I can’t talk for long.”    
  
“Ah, can I ask your name again? Even if there’s no one to tend to it, a gravestone needs a name, right?”   
  
“Kurokami Medaka. Seventeen years old.”    
  
“Young, aren’t you? Why are you so eager to die anyway?”    
  
Kurokami Medaka pointed up at the sky. “I have to go stop the moon from falling.”    
  
Aikawa Jun suddenly punched her own hand like she had an idea. “Oh, well there’s no reason to die over that right? Just, go up in that rocket, stop the moon from falling, return home and the curtain falls and the audience cheers. If the villain is trying to kill you then just defeat the villain, easy…!”    
  
Medaka blinked.  _ Is this what I sound like to other people? Jeez how has everyone not tried to murder me.  _   
  
“Why do you want to live so badly, anyway?” Aikawa looked like she was genuinely curious.   
  
“I haven’t been woken up early in the morning by my mother. I haven’t been scolded by my father. I haven’t gotten into a fight with my mother. I haven’t skipped class to hang out with friends. I haven’t gotten into an argument with a friend and then had a tearful apology where we make up. I haven’t been held by my mother and cried into her arms when I was scared. I haven’t even gone on a single date with the boy I liked.” 

  
Kurokami Medaka with tearful eyes, looked up and shouted at the red in front of her. “I haven’t even gotten to live like a normal girl yet, I haven’t been alive for one single day of my life so why was I even born?”    
  
At her tearful confession, Aikawa Jun just looked bored. Medaka could not stop comparing the other to Junko in her mind. “So, all along you just desired to be a normal girl? Don’t you think that’s kind of a cliche?” Like Enoshima Junko, somebody dissatisfied with the whole world. “What’s so good about normal people anyway? You want to be petty, and lazy like everybody else?”    
  
“Lazy?”   
  
“Well, the world is a pretty bad place you know. If people really wanted it to be a better place they would work for it, but they just keep making excuses all the goddamn time.”    
  
Aikawa Jun yawned.    
  
“At least villains in fiction are evil in interesting ways. Most people are just so sinful that it’s stupid.”    
  
Kurokami Medaka once stood on a tower far above others. She refused to believe that things like genius and unfair advantage could exist in this world because if they did not exist then other people would be able to climb up to her level. If all she made all the humans around her into better people than she would not be alone.    
  
There was a boy who promised he would never leave her alone, he would catch up to her eventually. Ever since they were kids, Zenkichi was always followng behind her pushing himself to the limit over and over again. But he was just a normal boy, so he broke. For her sake. Over and over again. She saw his cold body torn apart by snake bites. She saw his dead body after he hung himself.    
  
If she asked him to, Zenkichi would have gone up into the stars and died with her. That was why she absolutely had to die alone. She was fine with dying, but the idea of a world without Zenkichi was completely unacceptable to her.    
  


_ I will not kiss you.  _ _  
_ _ Because the hardest part of this is leaving you. _   
  
She once thought that way but… she was just lonely.    
  
“After all, how many people took advantage of you? They all used you didn’t they? All they saw were your talents and how you could be of use to them. Why did you want to help such people anyway?” Aikawa asked. 

  
“No I…” There was a time where she thought she was born to be of help to strangers. She obsessively, aggressively, helped others. She pushed herself past her very limit. She pushed her only childhood friend away. Why did she want to do that all so badly again? Medaka’s head was too heavy with thoughts and she collapsed forward. She opened the fingers of her trembling hand as if grasping at air. “I just wanted to be needed by someone. So, I kept helping others, hoping that one day someone would want me. Someone would tell me it was alright for someone like me to be born.” 

 

If all of her other talents were stripped away. If she lost her money. If she lost her looks. Would there be at least one person who wanted her simply because she was fun to be around?

 

  
  
She was addicted to giving others hope and happiness as a reason for her own existence. The same way Enoshima Junko was addicted to despair. Obsessed to the level of chemical dependence. When others were not around her, she felt withdrawal. 

_ Ah, this feeling I’m shaking with. It’s despair.  _   
  
Just then Kurokami Medaka felt something soft against her cheek. Oh, this was odd. She was always used to throwing her arms around others to comfort them, but she had never once been hugged herself. Everybody just assumed she never needed any comfort. She was a girl drunk on happiness after all.    
  
Just then, in response to her desperate and ugly statement, Aikawa Jun had thrown her arms around the girl and pulled her face up against her chest. That woman who seemed angry at the whole world, was quite soft as well. “It will be alright. The world will grow to be kind. Even if it’s only one person, someone will definitely understand you.”   
  
Medaka leaned against her, her breath steadying.    
  
Aikawa continued to talk in her soft voice. “Being born. Breathing. Feeling. You can hear these words can’t you? Take another deep breath. You are alive. You won’t die no matter what. If you’re fighting alone in a sea of stars, then I’ll take your hand.”   
  
“I…”   
  
“Do you not know how to ask for help? I guess Medaka-chan you must be as stupid as everybody else. You must be so happy, you’re not so different from them after all.” Aikawa suddenly let go of her and looked around the broken down room for a spacesuit. “Just go complete your mission in space, and then I’ll drag you back to earth.”    
  
“Jun…”   
  
“Hm?   
  
“I don’t think humans are stupid. I love them.”    
  
“Well, you’re still young…”    
  
Medaka felt like Jun was wrong in her assessment of humanity, but she could not find the words to argue against her. If Junko were here she probably would have done a better job of arguing her point, just because she liked to be contrarian. “Do you really think someone will understand me?”   
  
  


“I know this guy he acts like he’s a walking enigma, but even he found someone who was different in every way, but just like him. His inverse. Like looking in a mirror. When you find someone like that give em hell?”    
  
“Eh? Why?”   
  
“Isn’t the quickest way to understanding each other a little bit of bloodshed? That way you can taste each other’s warmth. You’ll get real close, real fast.”    
  
“You’re a little bloodthirsty, Jun…” Medaka muttered, surprised by her ferocity.    
  
“Well, I’m Overkill Red you know.”   
  
“But, the color of blood is pink now.”   
  
“Eh? Since when?” Jun flashed a nihilist smile. “Even if you find somebody that needs you, that’s not the same as not being alone. What you need is an equal. Only a diamond can polish a diamond.”    
  
For a moment Kurokami Medaka thought of that insufferably brilliant girl Enoshima Junko. It would be absurd to call that girl a reflection in the mirror, perhaps a funhouse mirror. After all Medaka was the first daughter of a noble family, dignified, and Enoshima Junko was a neon colored gyaru.    
  
Kurokami Medaka the natural beauty.   
Enoshima Junko who wore too much makeup.    
Kurokami Medaka who was humble and selfless.    
Enoshima Junko who was vain and self obsessed.    
Kurokami Medaka who saved everyone.   
Enoshima Junko who destroyed everyone.    
  
Yet neither of them could ever be normal no matter how much they desired it. Therefore, even if Kurokami Medaka obsessed with hope, and Enoshima Junko obsessed with despair, they would both be alone. She reached out to touch her fingers on the mirror, and Enoshima Junko’s reflection did the same. 

  
Kurokami Medaka suddenly woke up from the memory of how she had survived. She looked around to see herself in an old shrine. Her body was lying face down on the floor like she had been sleeping. She touched her head and felt something cool, at first she thought it was her own blood, but then she put her finger in her mouth to taste it and realized it was just ketchup. Somebody was playing a terrible prank on her.    
  


  
She noticed a note on the side and saw messy and extravagant looking handwriting.  _ I saved you from the rocket ship like I promised but then I got bored and had another job to do so I just sort of left you there -Jun.  _

 

“Aikawa-san, you’re not a very responsible adult. I’m not sure I want to grow up to be like you.” Medaka said, her eyes and expression completely flat as she crumpled the note up. 

 

🦔

 

Medaka looked at the torii gates and the pathway that wound down the hill in front of her. She got the impression that this shrine had been vandalized by the same person who put her in that rocket, because now the torii gates all had banners hanging from them reading “Medaka Shrine.”    
  
She walked down the pathway trying to assess her situation.    
She was still alive.   
Medaka fist pumped the air.    
Yay.    
  
She looked up at the sky and saw the sea of stars she had almost drowned in. The moon was absent from the night sky. So, logically everything proceeded as Jun said, Medaka had saved the world from the moon and Jun saved her.   
  
She looked at her own wrist, there was a silver bangle dangling from it.    
_ Medaka-chan is not allowed to run in the hallways, can never surpass this speed.  _   
Medaka considered trying to run in order to press her luck, but she was far too honest and her instinct was to follow rules rather than break them.    
  
Before she could gather her thoughts any further she was interrupted by a loud boy, standing on the steps leading up to the shrine. “Oi, what are you doing at a shrine this late hour at night? Have you come to worship me girl? I accept offerings of money and sake for my magnificence.”    
  


Standing in front of her was a boy with yellow hair so spiky it looked like electricity was running through it, and a tight fitting leather jacket like he thought he was some kind of rock star.    
  
“Oh? Oudo, is that you? Long time no see.” Medaka said, not reacting to his boisterous statements at all. She was not very good at banter.    
  
“Yeah. It seems like I was kidnapped and manhandled. They should have known to treat such precious goods with care.” He rubbed his head, narrowing his eyes as he did.    
  
  


Oudo was once the leader of the Flask Plan. He tried to brainwash her into being his wife in the past. Now that she thought about it, it was pretty fucked up. Even so, she just walked alongside him happy to see a familiar face.    
  
“Hmm, girl let’s talk about something.”   
  
“Sure, it’s quiet anyway… Too quiet. Haha! I’ve always wanted to say a line like that.”    
  
“You’re being a little weird.”    
  
“Zenkchi says I get weird when I’m anxious.”    
  
“Let’s talk about love!” Oudo announced confidently, deciding on the subject for her. “To tell you the truth there’s someone really special to me. I can’t go a second without thinking about him. He’s the person I love the most.”   
  
“Is it you?”   
  
“You’re correct!” 

 

Medaka was just happy she had guessed right. “I’m happy you can love yourself. It’s definitely a good thing. It’s funny I’ve been myself almost my entire life, but I never got around to loving myself.”    
  
“Almost your entire life?”   
  
“Well, there was that time you wiped my memory to try to brainwash me into being your wife. I was Medaka II for a little bit.”    
  
“It’s like you’re not even bothered at all…”    
  
“Well, the only one who ever saw me as a woman in the seventeen years I have lived was you. How about it? Have you fallen in love with me at first sight all over again? It’s a fine day do you want to propose to me?”    
  
Oudo scowled, pinching his pointed eyebrows. “I don’t want to. Even the great me can’t see you as a woman anymore. Eh, what, seventeen?”    
  
“Well, it’s been about a year since we last saw each other. My birthday already passed.”   
  
“Oh, when was it?”   
  
  


“December 25th. When she learned the day it was, Enoshima got really cranky about it.” That girl never seemed to be happy about anything. Medaka continued, having an oddly normal conversation with someone who had tried to kill her in the past.    
  
“Isn’t there anybody you love? You shouldn’t ask me to propose to you if you have someone like that.”    
  
“Well. I love humans.”    
  
“Are you trying to get them to love you in return? Well, they can’t, they’re too busy already worshipping me.” 

  
“I see, I see.”    
  
Being around Enoshima Junko so much, Medaka had gotten used to tuning out those kinds of egotistical statements. It was the only thing that brought her peace of mind. Of course she was avoiding his question.    
  
Of course there was someone she loved.    
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.    
The city was still far away from them.    
So far away it may as well have ben somewhere else.   
Like in a dream for instance.    
The streets were empty and all of the children were fast asleep. 

She thought of Zenkichi again.   
Loving someone for your entirely life, obsessing over them to the point of madness.    
Living like the two of you were the only ones in the world.   
_ I’ve got you, and you’ve got me. _   
She wanted to be with him forever, and a little bit longer.    
If she grew up too quickly, her childhood days with him would end.    
Life was empty. A room with solved puzzles that she had already lost interest in.    
It was a vacuum she could not breathe in.    
Then, he found her, and filled the room.    
Now, without him, she was suffocating again.    
  
She knew her feelings were real. They had been her constant companion all of her life, much like Zenkichi. Loving Zenkichi was proof that she could love others.    
  
Or at least she thought.   
But… her own mother had died.   
Her brother was obsessed with her to a creepy extent.    
Her sister was always distant.    
She had no affection for her blood father.   
Her other father… had only wanted to groom her.    
Was there a single person who ever loved her just for her?    
But…    
But…

But how could someone who has never been loved be capable of loving someone else? 

 

Perhaps that was the reason Zenkichi was always getting broken for her sake.   
She could not love someone else.   
Not without crushing them.    
In that case what made her different from Enoshima Junko again? 

 

Oudo suddenly stared at her, interrupting her thoughts. “Yo, beast girl. When you say that you love humans, that just sounds wrong.”   
  
“Eh?”    
  
“When you say it sounds like you don’t even consider yourself one of them. It’s too much love. Even I who loves myself that much, thinks there’s such a thing as too much love.”    
  
Overflowing love could become an act of violence.    
Like poor Matsuda-kun, his blood painting the floor of the old school building.    
  
Medaka was silent.    
  
Oudo kept speaking. “Besides, won’t Hitoyoshi-kun get jealous? Who do you love more? Strangers you’ve never met, or Hitoyoshi-kun?”    
  
She wanted to say Hitoyoshi, but she had already chosen the strangers. After all, she chose to die to protect them, after going on and on about how she was going to find her own happiness. She did not even let HItoyoshi die with her.   
  
She could not stand the idea of being without him, but she did not even think if he would be lonely without her. 

 

“You’re really an abnormal girl now that I think about it.”   
  
“Haha, well we’re abnormals after all.”    
  
“There’s abnormal and there’s just plain wrong. I mean, I did a terrible thing to you in the past didn’t I? Yet, you’re talking to me like nothing happened between us. It’s not like you forgave me, it’s like you’re not even mad in the first place. Like you lack the capacity to be mad.” 

  
“W-well, that was a long time ago.”   
  
“What about this situation? You woke up all alone, and it’s like you’re not scared to die at all. We’re not friends, you have no reason to trust me. For all you know I could be planning to kill you like I did in the past.”    
  
“Why would you do that?”   
  
“Because I’m human. At our root, we are connected through. A biology. A universal cruelty.”    
  
Humans were quite ugly.   
She had been told that over and over again.    
In the past that white haired little boy told her she was loving humans while ignoring their faults.   
Human love and kindness.   
Human cruelty and apathy.   
They were two sides of the same coin, like Enoshima Junko and herself.    
  
That was why she loathed her own beauty so much. She felt like it made her outside of humanity. She was outside of biology itself. 

  
“Being happy isn’t just ignoring all unhappy emotions you know! Happiness isn’t just the absence of sadness. Love isn’t just the absence of hatred. Truth isn’t the absence of lies.” Oudo seemed to be getting angry at her, but she had no idea why. “Hope isn’t the absence of despair.”    
  
“D-did I say something wrong?”    
  
“When you say stuff like, ‘both my enemies and my allies are the same to me’. It really pisses me off. We’re still enemies you know. Never once did we become friends.” 

 

Oudo suddenly clutched both of his shoulders as if his body was collapsing in on itself. He coughed out a terrible liquid, spilling it messily all over his jacket. His hair spiked up even more, and suddenly electricity coursed through his body, focusing around his wrist. He struggled, sparks flying and dancing madly for a moment, before he gave up entirely.    
  
A wicked grin spread across his face. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. “Damn, guess I couldn’t win against you this time after all.”   
  
“Oudo?”    
  
Oudo took another step forward but began to fall. He began to fall backwards. Medaka reached out for his hand, but she could not move fast enough and his fingers slipped away from there. She saw his body fall down the stairs.    
  
  
When she reached the end of it, he was lying on the ground hideously broken. Everything about him looked twisted and mangled, his smile the most twisted of all.    
  
“Looks like you couldn’t save me.”   
  
“What’s happening?”    
  
She saw the words flash across his bracelet.  _ Do not let Kurokami Medaka escape your sight alive.  _   
  
“It just really pisses me off, seeing a lonely girl like you try to be friends with everyone you know?” Oudo snarled with his last breath. “But more than being angry with you. I’m just sad. We never should have been enemies, we could have been friends…”    
  
He coughed, hoarse, painful, like his body was trying to empty out his organs. He was rejecting life itself. The moment he saw her, rather than try to kill her he chose to die. Not only that, he lectured her for trusting him so much for no reason at all when he could have killed her for his own survival.    
  
Th proud, noble, Oudo, was slipping in his own blood as he tried to stand up once more. He looked like a dog dying in the gutter. He was human just like the rest of them. It seemed everyone was human, they were all weak like this, all except her. 

 

Nietzsche once said,    
What is evil? - Whatever springs from weakness.    
Medaka believed the opposite.   
Someone like her who could ignore human weakness like that, was the antithesis of humanity.    
  
That was why she could never hate humans like Jun did. She did not have to struggle with the same things they did. Anybody would become a genius, if they just lived a life without any hardships at all. She was just vacuous. Not thinking of anything. The fact that Oudo might betray her she just did not think about it.   
  
She did not think about him dying for her sake either.   
She just did not think of others.    
  
“H-hey, now’s not the time to pull off some kind of cool heroic sacrifice. You’re not cool at all, you’re just someone who thinks too highly of himself. I’ll save you so don’t.”    
  
“You don’t need to save the world, you don’t even need to become happy, but there has to be someone you need so much, your story would be incomplete without them.”    
  
Removing them from the story was like tearing out half the pages.    
She wanted others to need her.   
But, was there anybody that she needed.    
  
“Hey, there has to be a hospital near here. If I can just run you there in time. If there’s some kind of poison in your body we just need an antagonist to slow it down and-” 

  
Medaka screamed in his face, panic increasing. If she was not chained by this bangle, she could have run him somewhere to save him.    
  
“Don’t save me… I order you… save yourself instead.” 

  
“There’s no way I can do that!”    
  


Oudo reached out with a bloody hand to caress the face of the woman he had once loved. “What an abominable woman. Defying me… until the end, huh? But I shall allow it. There are things that are beautiful because one cannot possess them…like happiness...with that person.”    
  
Oudo passed away just like that.    
Kurokami Medaka had not even noticed, because she had picked his corpse up in her arms unable to let go of her determination to save him. 

 

🦔

 

“Dear girl…”   
  
Medaka as she walked as fast as her bracelet would allow, passed someone on the street.    
Against the pitch black night sky he was as white as a ghost.    
His silver hair moved in the breeze as he turned his head.    
  
Munakata Kyosuke. (For real this time).    
  
“That boy, was he your friend?”   
  
“Was…No, no, no. I’m going to save him.” 

  
Munakata walked up and put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s just a body now.”   
  
Kurokami medaka suddenly, like a cornered beast in a cage lashed out at him baring her fangs. She struck his hand to get him to let go of her, not caring if he was hurt or not. “He’s not dead yet. I have to save him. Don’t get in the way of me saving him.”    
  
  


Munakata knew what it was like to struggle under ideals. It seemed like the more you strived for them, the more you fell short of them. Failures up in front of you, like dead bodies trying to build a tower reaching for the sky.    
  
Yet, you still were expected to move on.    
It was like hope itself naturally led to despair.    
That was why Munakata had given up on hoping a long time ago. If he could not make things better than he would just punish those who lived to make things worse.    
  
That girl was like him. She once called herself student council president, and she once tried to save everyone. When he watched every one of his ideals crumble around him like the tower of Hope’s Peak, he had been all alone. That was why he wanted to comfort her at a time like this. He would not leave her alone even if she fought him. 

  
“Kurokami-san.”   
  
“There should be a hospital near here.”    
  
“Kurokami-san.”   
  
“Only a few minutes have passed. If brain death has not set in then the body can be resuscitated, or perhaps I should freeze it until the proper equipment becomes available.”    
  
“There’s nothing you can do! Just accept that already!” Munakata raised his voice to its harshest extent. “What you’re feeling right now is the despair that needs to be defeated! Don’t run away!” 

 

“Eh…?”   
  
Kurokami Medaka felt the body in her arms. It was cold and unresponsive. Oudo was not smiling in his usual cocky manner. She realized, the more she gripped his body, the more her grip on reality started to slide away from her. She looked at Munakata with tears in her eyes. She was just a sensitive girl after all.    
  
The two of them buried his body on the outskirts of the shrine without a word.    
Munakata stabbed a knife into a nearby tree, and Medaka hung his jacket there like a gravemarker.   
  
“I couldn’t save him…” She finally muttered again as they were walking away.    
  
“There’s countless people I haven’t saved. I see them, like bodies floating adrift in the sea…” Munakata’s eyes were distant, like he was looking elsewhere. “Even if you can’t save others, you can kill the ones responsible. You can still do something for all those you were unable to save.” 

She sensed a hint of mania underneath his voice. Medaka could not quite place it, but something seemed to have changed in the former student council president from the last time she had seen him.    
  
“Munakata-senpai. Between the old me who tried to save everyone, and the new me which one do you think is better?” Medaka gripped her sleeve, unable to express the emotion she was feeling. Perhaps Oudo was right and she was so warped she just did not feel negative emotions. “I’m starting to wonder if I should have ever tried to change… Maybe, we’d all be back at that school right now if I was still a student council president.”    
  
Zenkichi would be at her side fussing over her as usual.    
Shiranui would have never left the school, and would be eating candy and enjoying herself.   
The old her would have defeated Enoshima Junko and reformed her.   
Kumagawa and her would laugh the days away.    
Kamukura would be learning to be friends with Komaeda, and enrolled as an official student.    
The old her never would have lost to anybody.   
The current her was on the worst losing streak she had ever endured.    
  
That was right, they all wished to go back to that school. They had all been happy at the time, she was sure of it. Why then, didn’t she protect everyone’s happiness?    
  
This was all because she started to wish for herself.    
  
“It’s only inevitable that you would change. I was the same once too. The kind of soft-hearted person who wished for everyone to be happy.” When he saw Makoto, it irritated him so much. No matter how much he wished for it, he could never return to his happy days at Hope’s Peak. He could never live in a world with just him, Juzo, and Chisa. He could not unsee the dark side of the world he had been exposed to.    
  
He could not unsee the things which made it impossible for him to trust others.   
He could not unsee the things which made it impossible for him to be kind to others.    
  
“No matter how many times you’re destroyed, you have to keep on living. So you just rebuild yourself over and over again. And then one day you realize, you’ve become someone else.”    
  
Medaka hesitated.   
Self destruction did not sound like living.   
Even though Munakata’s behavior was unnerving, all she could do was be concerned for him.    
  
Munakata looked at her with a smile.   
That glinted.   
Like a samurai drawing a blade from his sheath. “You shouldn’t feel guilty. Maybe… it’s impossible to save everyone. No matter how hard you try not a single person can be saved.”   
  
Kyosuke Munakata.    
  
“No matter how strong you become.”    
  
His always stoic face.   
  
“No matter how precious of a person they are to you.”    
  
From one of his eyes, he was crying. She saw teardrops slide down his smooth face.    
  
“You won’t be able to save them. Not anyone. They’ll all fall away from your hands.”    
  
He reached up and covered the side of his face with his hand, pretending he was just brushing back his hair.    
  
Kurokami wanted to do something for him, but she did not think a person like her was qualified to understand his grief. Munakata was definitely a human being too, he tried to become strong by destroying the weakness within him. He did not even realize that was just self destruction. 

  
“Munakata-senpai. There are people I want to protect…”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“I haven’t thought about it. Isn’t it good to want to protect people? Friendship, effort and victory are the values of shonen jump.”   
  
“You’re responsible for the people you save, Kurokami. This is why having too much hope is a bad thing as well. It’s because you hold other people in such high regard that they deceived you.”   
  
“Munakata-senpai?” 

  
“That’s why. You let Enoshima Junko live, didn’t you? Even knowing everything that she had done? How can you justify that knowing all of her victims?”   
  
“I wasn’t thinking…”   
  
She just did not think about it.   
She was naive, like Oudo said.   
She wanted to be liked, so she accepted everybody.    
It was not getting closer to them.   
It was not forgiving them.    
It was just deciding to accept everything about them.   
So they could never leave her.

Because she wanted others to stay around.    
  
Suddenly, there was a sword at her neck.    
Munakata’s expression, a freshly drawn blade.    
She saw a single pinprick of red form at her neck and trickle down.    
  
“This is why despair can’t ever be forgiven. It’s even taken a girl like you away from me.” 


	5. My Ill Deeds Will Become Hope

Munakata only remembered the smell of burning.  
When Hope’s Peak started to fall, he forgot the rest of the world and went searching for her. He left the academy behind and frantically looked, until he finally found her standing alone in a children’s park amidst the flames.  
  
Yukizome Chisa, her face was colored orange by the flames and stained by her own tears. The Chisa he knew was strong, reliable, always thinking of others before herself. He had never once seen her cry. She was the type to smile when she was upset.  
  
He had no idea how hopeless a situation, that Chisa could do nothing but cry. Immediately, Munakata felt a stabbing pain within him. Every tear that rolled down her cheek, shattered him a little further. He wanted it to stop. Chisa should never make such a terrible face. Whoever made Chisa feel this way should never have existed in the first place.  
  
He had someone he loved.  
Warm and kind.  
He wanted her to be happier than anyone else.  
For her, he would throw away his life.  
That’s why he could endure any despair.  
If it meant protecting her.  
  
Then, why was she crying?  
What had he endured for?  
What had he thrown away so much of himself for?  
Whose fault was this?  
  
Kyosuke was so silent at the sight of her crying, that Chisa did not notice him until she raised her head. He felt utterly useless, unable to do anything for her. 

“Kyosuke you’re here.”  
  
Immediately, she ran up and wrapped her arms around him. Munaata stood still, ice cold against her. He felt her warm tears spill on his chest.  
  
“Are you injured?”  
Who was it who said those words?  
It was him?  
  
“My class.”  
  
“We were too late I’m sorry.”  
  
“Stop it Kyosuke. This wasn’t your fault. I. Oh god…”  
  
Munakata looked up and saw what left Chisa with wordless horror. In the playground, the bodies of children were burning up. They were so twisted and mangled, blackened by ash, that it was impossible to believe they had once been alive. They were once happy, laughing children before despair struck them.  
  
Chisa just wanted to spend her days doting on her class. She put so much effort into taking care of individual students. If all teachers were like Chisa, who cared for each student like a person rather than just their talents then Hope’s Peak would become a good school after all. That was why he wanted to steal the seat of chairman from Kirigiri Jin. He would get rid of all the scientists, he would cancel all research, and he would let that school just be a school again.  
  
All so Chisa could spend her days happily with the children in her class. He wanted her and the chidren’s days to be filled with smile, but now Chisa was crying against him, and the children were burning up. Her own class who she had nearly died to protect had gone missing. The future he fought so hard for was falling apart in front of him.

  
Whose fault is this?  
Whose?  
  
What kind of world allowed for children to be killed?  
What kind of world punished the efforts of kind people like Chisa and rewarded evil?  
That world was just a rotten apple.  
It was just despair.  
Chisa said this was not his fault, but if Munakata was stronger this never would have happened.  
He should have become the head of hope’s peak sooner.  
He should have slit the throat of the useless headmaster.  
He should have killed those who were rotting it to the core.  
  
That’s right, this was not his fault. It was the fault of despair. Despair drove someone to kill these children. Despair needed to be punished. Munakata had no idea how to give anyone hope. He had no idea if he even had any hope left for himself, or the world.  
  
He could not even make the girl he loved smile.  
But, he could destroy despair.

“Kyosuke we can’t let them do this, all this destruction has to stop. Rid the world of despair. If anyone can do it, it’s you.”     
  
Chisa pulled him closer murmuring into his chest, and Munakata finally wrapped his arms around her. He buried his lips in her hair, and whispered only to her.

  
“Whoever hurts you, whoever makes you sad, I will destroy them, all of them. With my own hands.”  
  
If he was too weak to protect her he would destroy everyone who hurt her.  
If he could not make her smile, he would destroy everyone who made her cry.

Because Munakata  himself felt despair.  
Insane despair.  
Unable to help a single person, unable to keep anybody alive.  
The guilt of just surviving.  
The despair of a violent reality.  
Unrelenting. Never letting up for even a second.  
True despair.  
Just tired of it all.  
The despair of being unchosen. Unable to change a single thing. No matter how hard you try.

He had no idea what to do with those feelings of despair. Which made him feel like there was no hope left in the world. Not a single drop of it. The kind that made it impossible for the words ‘I’ll protect you, I’ll make you smile, or This will all be okay’ to leave his lips because he felt like he would be lying to her. But suddenly he realized there was something he could do even without hope.  
  
He could become something else.  
A thing that exceeds human comprehension.  
He understood now.  
A thing darker and more hideous than evil.  
Become worse than despair to destroy despair.

Hope would always lead to despair and despair would always lead to hope.

So it should just be destroyed already.  
Let it all end.  
If he could become than then…  
  
“So that’s why please smile, my precious Chisa.”  
  
That was the only time he ever called her by her first name.  
Yukizome Chisa hiding her face from hm, smiled.  
  
🦔

 

“Munakata-senpai. Do you hate me now because I lied to you?” Even with a sword at her throat, Kurokami Medaka asked him such an innocent question.  
  
Munakata tightened his grip on his sword. “I don’t hate you.”

  
Kurokami Medaka took a step backwards. She wanted to live. She wanted to see Zenkichi again. She wanted to do all those normal girl things that she never experienced in seventeen years of life. She wanted a family of her own. “Then, why are you… I didn’t want to save everybody this time, I swear. I just wanted the people around me to keep on smiling. That’s all I wanted.”  
  
Enoshima Junko had Kumagawa Misogi.  
Ikusaba Mukuro had Naegi Makoto.  
Shiranui Hansode had Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.  
Kamukura Izuru had Komaeda Nagito.  
  
It was wrong to say the world would be better off if they just died already. Even if that was true, Medaka’s little world would be affected. There were still people who would miss them. If they died, they would be sad.

“Even if saving others is impossible…just wanting to save someone… is not wrong is it?”

“You’re wrong.” Medaka cried out.  
  
Medaka choked on her next words. Ideals, thinking you were always right, she never realized it could be such a terrible thing until she saw it in somebody else. “Are you saying only good people deserve to be saved? People who are broken, should just be thrown away?”  
  
“Do you feel like a good girl, because you’re able to love broken things? Does it make you feel good about yourself?” Munakata asked.  
  
Medaka grit her teeth like a beast.

“Why would someone like you sympathize with Enoshima Junko? You were kinder than anybody else. You’re nothing like her.” Munakata asked her.  
  
Enoshima Junko, and Kurokami Medaka. The girl in the mirror. Flipped and turned around. Complete inverses of one another.  
  
“It’s not Enoshima but… she was important, to a person who was important to me.” Medaka said, recalling the shonen manga that boy loved so much. Ever since middle school she wanted to be friends with Kumagawa Misogi. Things would have gone much better, if her, Zenkichi, and Kumagawa, the three of them got along as friends rather than enemies. Even if Kumagawa no longer wished to be friends, even if threw everything away in favor of Enoshima Junko, she could not help her own feelings.  
  
Even if he despised her she could not stop wanting to be his friend.  
Her feelings towards humans were always like that, one sided and lonely.

“Munakata-senpai, there are tears in your eyes. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

  
Munakata Kyosuke shook his head. A few tears flew away from his face. “No, despair will infect and spread, if even a little remains. It’s not your fault, you were just too good for this rotten world. Annihilating it is an act of compassion! Kurokami Medaka, I… I… I will save you.”  
  
Munakata cut through his hesitation and swung his sword finally. Medaka could only jerk her head back and take a step back. Were it not for the bangle, she could move fast enough to multiply herself or appear behind him but now she was limited to only human speed.  
  
He swung the sword at her again and threw her whole body back with the flexibility of a gymnast. It was not in time and she saw her hair be cut on the edge of his sword. It fluttered down slowly, ignoring the fast movements of the two still fighting.  
  
“Munakata-senpai, this is ridiculous. You can’t expect a person to fight a katana with their bare hands, this isn’t shonen jump!”

  
“Even if you don’t fight back, I’ll kill you. My ill deeds will become Hope.”

  
Medaka got the feeling that Munakata was somewhere else, a lonely place, far beyond words now. He locked his heart away in order to be strong. But, Medaka could not hate him for it, because the only reason he was struggling so much right now was because he was so much more human than she was.  
  
She continued to dodge his swings with no idea how to make a counterattack. There was not even a piece of pipe lying around to make a counterattack with. If only she was the other Munakata and had all those swords hidden on her person. Even if she did have a weapon though, she did not want to fight back. Munakata was a good person in her eyes. He had been a student council president who wanted to make the school that he loved better just like her, so why was he hurting others? What had pushed him to this point?  
  
In her dodging like an elegant two person dance where Munakata took the lead, she finally reached the last step as she backed against a wall. Kurokami Medaka closed her eyes thinking if only one of them could live, then a human life like Munakata had much more worth than hers.  
  
When she opened them she saw a black shadow with mismatched eyes standing in her way. Kamukura stood in front of her, arm up in the air to block. The steel of Munakata’s blade dug into his arm, tearing a hole in his suit but he did not show any pain.

  
“Attacking your own allies, Munakata? Pitiful. I thought your enemy was despair.”

  
“Y-you…”  
  
Just then Chisa Yukizome caught up to them. Her eyes wide with innocence. “Hinata-kun. Hinata-kun what’s wrong, your arm it’s hurt? Kyosuke…?”  
  
“Yukizome! Hinata Hajime died a long time ago. The school covered up his disappearance.” Munakata said, as he ripped his sword out of Kamukura’s wound causing him to bleed further. He took a few steps back to assess the situation.  
  
“N-no, that can’t be. I know he went missing but he’s right here in front of us. Chiaki’s going to be so happy to see him again.”

  
Hinata lamented how much of a coward he was. If he had just told her earlier, this could have been avoided. He wanted to be a hero? He wanted to be liked on top of that? He was not someone who deserved that, after everything he had done.  
  
Once more, Hinata Hajime who had two selves.  
Could only think of himself.  
The only one to blame for locking him in this prison called ‘self’ at the end was him.  
If he was less of a coward, he would have faced them all a long time ago.  
  
“He’s right, I have no recollection of this Hinata. A boring and dead end existence. Not even fit to be an unremarkable cog in the machine, he could disappear and the world would lose nothing.” Hinata brushed his hand through his long black bangs pulling them back so his face, and the stitch scars that ran across his forehead would be more evident. “I am the Ultimate Hope, Kamukura Izuru.”  
  
“The Kamukura project…” Chisa whimpered. “But you remembered me-”  
  
“I merely played along with your expectations from the moment I saw you recognize my face, so you would let your guard down.” Hinata in an instant moved so fast as to disappear and reappear behind Chisa.  
  
He raised his hand in the air but before he could strike down, Munakata had already thrown himself around her. He looked willing to die without even a moment of hesitation. What a hero. A person that Hinata Hajime would never be. Munakata wrapped his arms around her to protect her. The way he should have with Chiaki. The way he should have with Komaeda. But, he killed Chiaki, he strangled Komaeda.  


“The hell are you doing bleeding idiot! Can’t any of you keep your organs in your body for five minutes!”  
  
Matsuda Yasuke running for his life with Mikan holding onto his hand for dear life, finally arrived on the scene.  
  
All three of them had the worst timing possible.

  
“Mikan!” Chisa cried.  
  
“Miss Yukizome.”  
  
Munakata with his arm still around Chisa raised his katana in the air and pointed it directly at Yasuke. “You. How do I know you?”  
  
Before Matsuda could even come up with a decent lie or even run his mouth, Mikan from behind him kicked him over. “He’s Enoshima Junko’s accomplice! He helped hide the bodies of the steering committee members she murdered.”  
  
Matsuda was beginning to detect a pattern. He was betrayed again and again by women he tried to save. He grumbled as he pushed himself off from the ground. “Why does this keep happening? Oh right, I’m an idiot who never learns.”

  
“Kyosuke, that’s one of my students.”  
  
Chisa finally let go of Munakata. Mikan quickly ran to her side, burying her face in her teacher’s chest. There were tears welling in her eyes.

 

“Munakata-senpai…” Medaka muttered. “Why do you want to hurt me so badly? You want to become a teacher don’t you? You wanted to protect that school filled with children but… I’m a student there too.”  
  
“Don’t you realize what you’ve done.”  
  
Medaka’s eyes were totally empty. The three of them were fighting in a scramble crossing, in the shadow of a great tower. On top of that skyscraper there was a large plasma screen. It suddenly flickered to life.  
  
A news reporter came on screen. “Reports of the Kurokami Family’s complete slaughter, zero survivors confirmed… the one who’s to blame for this incident-”  
Before he could finish his throat was slit.  
On screen Enoshima Junko was sprayed with the reporter’s blood. When she snapped, it cut to footage of the Kurokami manner. The camera lingered on her father’s desk, six swords stabbed into his skull.  
  
Kurokami Medaka saw herself sitting on her father’s desk, laughing.  
Ah, it all made sense now.  
Her brain figured it out even though she did not want to accept it as reality. The fake Enoshima Junko’s goals were never to kill her. Simply to make her disappear, so the imposter could assume her identity and blame the destruction she caused on her.  
  
Kurokami Medaka.  
Matsuda Yasuke.  
Kamukura Izuru.  
They were all fugitives now, and Munakata was the hero of this story hunting her down. It was laughable, that Medaka once thought she was the main character of this world. Really, she wanted to laugh. “This is… this is a joke right? That’s terrible. Even Kumagawa would never tell a joke this bad.”

 

Matsuda Yasuke grabbed her by the hand. “We’ve got no time for this. Have your breakdown about your life falling apart in front of your eyes, I mean I know literally that exact same shitty feeling, but there’s no time.”  
  
When Munakata attacked both of them fleeing, Kamukura moved again catching him by the wrist making him unable to swing his sword. With a simple sweep of his legs Kamukura knocked him down to the ground. “Despair and become more interesting. Let’s meet again.”

  
The three criminals despised by the world fled leaving only those parting words behind them.

🦔

 

Yasuke reached forward and tried to take a card from Medaka’s hand. She made a really obvious face when his hand hovered over the joker. That girl did not have it in her to lie at all. It was cute. Too cute. And he was weak.  
  
That was how he ended up with both jokers in their game of old maid. The three of them had fled all the way to the bridge that led them out of this city only to see that it was completely destroyed. When Medaka suggested swimming across, Kamukura held her back. Which is why the three of them now were hiding out in an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront, sitting on crates and playing cards on a flat stack of six crates in the middle of them.  
  
They all shared their stories on how they got to this point. Matsuda and Kamukura may have left some details out, the unreliable narrators they were. Unlike Medaka, they were human failures. Despite their ribbing of one another and joking around, there was an undeniable emptiness in the room. Each one of them looked like they had lost everything.

All three of them tried living for the sake of others.  
Medaka for human beings.  
Kamukura for the sake of his classmates.  
Matsuda for Enoshima Junko.  
  
This was the result, all three were now left alone together. Matsuda finally finished recounting his story. He left out the part where Kurokami Medaka’s brother died, unable to bring herself to add onto her current despair.  
  
“I see. Then all we have to do is convince Munakata-senpai of our innocence and then team up with him to fight the real mastermind.” Medaka said, smiling the same as ever. It was like the tragic news from earlier had not even reached her ears.  
  
“Jeez, it’s annoying as hell when you talk about things like they’re that easy you know…” Matsuda grumbled, putting his cards down on the table. He tucked both the jokers in his hand into the front pocket of his shirt.  
  
“No, you just like complaining too much.” Medaka countered.  
  
Matsuda glared at her.  
  
Kamukura had been silently mulling things over the whole time. The more thoughtful he got, the more he seemed like Kamukura and the less like Hajime. This situation called for Kamukura, and not a useless reserve course student after all. “You’ve got it backwards. Munakata won’t believe our claim unless we find the true culprit first.”  
  
“He should believe in us. We’re innocent here.”  
  
“The only innocent one is you, princess.” There was Matsuda, being rude to someone whose family had just died, as kind hearted as ever. “Even if you were framed, both Kamukura and I really were Enoshima’s allies at one time. Munakata won’t forgive us for that.”

  
“B-but, you guys are better now.”  
  
“Don’t make such a sad face. It’s annoying how many feelings you have.” Matsuda grinded his teeth and looked away. “I ain’t even upset. Dumbass over there is a victim of the Kamukura project, but I dug my own grave so Junko and I could lay in it. I deserve to be punished.”  
  
“Calling me a dumbass is just an insult to your own surgery skills,” Hinata quipped back.  
  
“I love insulting myself. Love, or hate, I really need to get over myself already just like you.”

 

“How am I supposed to learn when I have such a poor role model?”

“Your fault for thinking you could look up to me in the first place. You’re like a crying brat always trying to get my attention.”  
  
“That’s the relationship we have. After all I am the monster and you are Doctor Frankenstein.”  
  
“Did you even read the book? That’s the entire point that the Doctor was a terrible role model. Tech, your brain is so empty even the Ultimate Neurologist can’t cure you.”  
  
This was Matsuda Yasuke’s version of getting along with someone else, but Medaka who could not read sarcasm at all did not recognize it. “Even if you think you need to be punished, that doesn’t mean you need to die. Besides, I don’t want Munakata-senpai’s hands to get dirty with your blood like that.”  
  
“Well I already knew I was trash but you didn’t have to tell me so bluntly. I can’t stand rudeness you know.” Matsuda said jokingly.  
  
“Eh? I didn’t call you trash…” Medaka still did not get his sarcasm.  
  
“Well, you two geniuses figure something out. Don’t let a good for nothing like me get in your way.” Matsuda shrugged casually, antennae on his head bobbing as he did.  
  
“You don’t need to insult yourself. You’re starting to sound like Kumagawa.”

 

“I’m being bullied by Kurokami of all people…”  
  
“What? I’m not trying to bully you!”  
  
He almost felt bad teasing a girl so innocent. Hinata who had been silently thinking again, spoke up. “We can’t solve a crime without any evidence. Genius isn’t magic. We don’t know anything yet. Besides, those detective stories where the detective looks at the crime scene and solves it instantly in one look are really boring.”  
  
“I know, Shiranui! Shiranui is involved in all of this, if we can find her she’ll tell us.”  
  
Kamukura suddenly spoke in a cold voice. “Kurokami. Don’t you think you should abandon Shiranui already?”  
  
“...?”  
  
“She’s the cause of all of this. If we hadn’t spent all of our time chasing her then we would have been able to adequately prepare for the person who wanted to attack hope’s peak.”  
  
Kamukura Izuru was logic.  
Kurokami Medaka was emotion.  
He envied her somewhat, a genius like her was not empty she was overflowing with emotions. As she felt that overflow again she slammed her hand on the table causing cards to flutter in the air.  
  
“So? When we want to save your friends it’s alright? Even if they try to destroy Hope’s Peak, as long as they are your friends it’s forgivable? Is that the right thing?”  
  
“Those people wanted to be saved. Shiranui was not even your friend to begin with.”  
  
“The reason we weren’t prepared for a crisis was because you tricked us into going into that simulation. To save you! We can save you, but not Shiranui!”  
  
“No, you were the one who insisted on saving Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi. If you had just left them for dead you never would have been tricked by me in the first place. Some people can’t be saved, they won’t change no matter how many second chances you give them.” No matter how much Medaka raised her voice, Kamukura just kept explaining in the same monotone. He stared at her with his dull, unmoving eyes. “Kurokami it’s not that you want to save them anyway. You just don’t want to lose, the two people you have left. Shiranui Hansode and Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.”  
  
Suddenly the boxes between them were kicked up, and cards sent flying into the air. Medaka was right in front of Kamukura, lifting him by his neck tie. “How do you know what it’s like? You had everything I wanted. A normal life. A normal family. And you threw it all away of your own free choice. How do you know what it’s like to lose things?”    
  
Kamukura felt the noose tighten around his neck. He said nothing in reply because she was right. He had nothing to begin with. Therefore he lost nothing. Nobody expected anything of him, so he disappointed no one. There was nobody he had to protect. Even when Imposter-kun died in his arms, it was not like they were classmates or even friends.  
  
He was the end result of a lifetime of slacking off, and he had been lecturing her. Kamukura’s silence only frustrated her more. Medaka let go of him dropping him on the floor. “Fine. I’ll do it myself. Ever since I started relying on others, I’ve weakened so much as a human.”

 

As she walked away, Matsuda looked first to Medaka, and then Hinata on the floor in front of him. His hand was in his coat pocket, but he did not really want the others know about how he was cheating at his bracelet. Matsuda considered following Medaka for a moment.  
  
If he followed her he would have to tell her about her brother. Who was he more responsible for? Where did he belong? The two people he wanted to be with the family he wanted to be apart of was no longer here.

 

Matsuda held his hand out to Kamukura, helping him up. “You have no idea how to talk to girls at all do you?”

  
“Are you sure you should be talking? You’re basically walking girl troubles…”  
  
“I’m going to talk even if it makes me look like an idiot. You should have figured this out already, I thought you were a fast learner.” Matsuda did not let go of his hand even after he lifted Kamukura up. “Jeez, you’re such a big boy.”  
  
They both sat on crates.  
Holding hands.  
It was a little awkward, because both of them were terrible at feelings.  
At least Hinata had the excuse of repetitive brain surgery making him numb.  
Matsuda was just terrible.  
  
He moved his head, his shaggy dark hair moving with him as he leaned in to get a look at Kamukura’s face. “You’re a brat, you know that.”  
  
“Quit treating me like a child.” Kamukura made what could only be described as a grumpy Hinata face. “That joke is starting to get tiresome.”  
  
“Children occasionally do as they’re told, so you’re far worse than a child.”  
  
Hinata had heard Kumagawa use those words to describe Junko once, and therefore Matsuda had insulted him in the worst way possible. He wanted to pout but that would require expressing an emotion.  
  
“It’s not that you distrust Shiranui, you just didn’t want to cooperate with Kurokami did you? You were jealous.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I can tell you’re pouting. You always go silent when you’re pouting.”  
  
“It’s just talking became too boring for me.”

  
“It’s fine because I’m jealous too. Who needs a guy like me around when Hitoyoshi-kun exists? He protected his childhood friend. He never gave into despair. There’s no one I can help.” Matsuda tightened his hand around Kamukura’s. It was the only reassurance he coud give him. Matsuda could not spout pretty words like Zenkichi could.  
  
“Neither of us deserve to be beside such a nice girl’s side.” Matsuda frowned. “So, us failures should stick together.”

“Calling me a failed experiment is a little bit…”  
  
“Well, did you become Ultimate Hope and save the world?”  
  
“Well, no…”  
  
“Then deal with it already.”  
  
Matsuda felt a slight stab of pain when he said he was on Kamukura’s side like this. Even if he had been kind to him in the past, being kind to him and being responsible for him were two different things. When the chips were down he planned on blaming Kamukura for everything and letting him take the fall so he could escape with Junko.  
  
Even though he knew Kamukura was just a victim. Kamukura was his victim, and yet he…  
He could not undo the surgery he did to his brain.  
He was just using him the way Enoshima used him.

 

🦔

  
Kurokami stormed out into the pitch black city.

 _Anyone’s fine._ _  
_ _Anyone’s fine so is anybody there?_  
  
She was alone again due to her own impulsiveness. That was right her family was… no, don’t think of that. Her true family was Kurokami Maguro and Kurokami Kujira. Those two would not die so easily.  
  
Suddenly, someone called out to her.  
Not with a voice but…  
In the darkness a set of glaring eyes appeared watching her.  
  
“Goodbye.”  
  
She said, just as they reunited again.  
THe night suddenly unraveled before her. Medaka saw Shiranui Hansode standing in front of her, wearing the same school uniform as always. She just casually waved and turned around.  
  
“Huh, but we just found each other again. Don’t say goodbye.”  
  
Medaka went chasing after her. All she could manage was a brisk walk, anything faster and she would be poisoned by her bangle. Shiranui did not turn around but she did not run away either. “Shiranui, whatever happened just tell me please. Let’s go back to the others together and explain it all to them.”  
  
Shiranui kept walking along the docks, until she found a sewer grate. She popped the lid up and threw it into the air. “Don’t follow me.” She said before disappearing down the ladder and into the sewers.  
  
Kurokami Medaka followed, of course.  
  
As she climbed down the ladder, a large maintenance tunnel opened up before her. As she reached the bottom, there was a spiral staircase winding down around a central tower. Shiranui had already begun to walk down that. Medaka wondered for a moment which circle of hell they were trying to reach.  
  
“What is this place?”  
  
“No one has stepped into the uncharted territories of this city in tens of years. This place was built like a labyrinth.”  
  
“Is that true?”  
  
“I dunno.”  
  
“Are you serious about this?”  
  
“I’m Shiranui Hansode, I’m never serious.”

 

Medaka wanted to bring Shiranui back, and reunite with Zenkichi once again. She wondered if what Kamukura said was true, and that if she was just forcing her feelings on someone who did not want to be saved. Kamukura probably understood people far better than she did, he was half HInata,  so therefore he was half human.  
  
“I actually have a good reason for doing all of this. I was trying to protect my friends all along.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No, that’s a lie.”  
  
Shiranui turned a corner, looking far gloomier than Medaka ever remembered her being. Medaka hesitated on the iron stairway.

 

“The truth is you and I are just strangers.”

 

“Even if you hate me, you don’t hate Zenkichi, right?”

Shiranui did not turn around.  
  
“Look at me!”  
  
Shiranui did not turn around.  
  
“I don’t care about what you did in the past. All that matters to me is the time we spent at school together! You want to go back there too, don’t you?”  
  
“Stop following me.”  
  
Shiranui took another step forward again, before she could get too far away, Kurokami Medaka threw her arms around her, holding her from behind. “No, I won’t let you go. I want to be a normal girl. I want to have normal friends. I can have what everybody else already has, right? Then, you deserve to be normal too!”  
  
“...”  
  
“You have people you care about too, don’t you? Even if I don’t know a single thing about your past, I know… you’re our own person.”  
  
“Shut up.”

  
“Please. Just tell me you were just kidding. That this is all a joke. Let’s just go back to that school together. Let’s fight over stupid things like we did in the past.”

  
It was sentimental.  
It wasn’t like her at all.  
That expression, that expression, for a moment within Shiranui’s eyes reflected so beautifully.

 

“Medaka-chan…”

  
Shiranui pointed to a tunnel that led further into the depths of the sewers. “Just, get out of this city.”  
  
“Are you trying to help me escape?”  
  
“No, you’re just annoying I want you out of my sight.” Shiranui’s beautiful face turned ugly. “I’m the mastermind don’t you get it!? She and I have been working together against you from the beginning. You always say, everybody matters, I want to save everyone, but it’s easy to say things like that! Why don’t you try being someone who doesn’t matter for once?”

“Shiranui, I won’t leave you. Even if you are the mastermind then just stop trying to hurt others and I’ll take the punishment with you-”

“What if Hitoyoshi-kun dies because of my actions?”  
  
“...I…”  
  
“If you had to choose between one of us, which one would you choose?”  
  
“That’s not…”  
  
“So greedy. You’re just a spoiled princess. Even if I were to tell you everything there was no way you would understand.”  
  
Other human beings were on the other side of a wire fence.  
She could only watch through the gaps.  
She could only try to stick her hand through and not get cut by the barbed wire.  
  
Still she reached out after Shiranui trying to grab onto her. As her hand moved forward she suddenly felt sleepy, her body too heavy to move on. The sleeping drug in her bangle had activated. Kurokami Medaka made it two more steps before she collapsed forward, her fingers closing on empty air, like she was trying to catch a dream in them.  
  
All alone swallowed up by the belly of the city, the first night of the game came to an end for Kurokami Medaka. 


	6. The Bickering of a Tiger and a Dragon

Yasuke Matsuda woke up in the arms of Kamukura Izuru.    
  
While debating what to do next, the drugs in their bangles activated causing them both to collapse to the floor of the warehouse and fall asleep. Apparently, even in sleep Kamukura refused to let go of Yasuke’s hand. For a talent that exceeded all of humanity he was so goddamn clingy.    
  
Yasuke Matsuda scowled, remembering his bangle command that made it necessary for him to always be close enough to hold someone’s hand. That was just forcing himself to be in the blast radius of those things called human beings. He already had enough of his own problems, his own thoughts, his own feelings.  _ I’ve got mine so just keep yours.  _

 

In other words, as usual Yasuke had woken up quite grumpy. 

 

In the night he had been so cold that he apparently used his own white lab coat as a blanket. Meanwhile, Kamukura slept like a dead man. Yasuke could bury him in the ground for a hundred years, and then dig him up and he would still look perfectly preserved. Beautiful things were never supposed to fade, but Kamukura had an ethereal sort of beauty about him that seemed untouchable by things like time, and perhaps even the air itself. That too was unnatural, it was like he was merely an image, a beautiful mirage shimmering between the fog and the early morning dew that one could reach out but never touch.    
  
Even at this close he had a difficult time believing that Kamukura was real. Even with his arms wrapped around him, Yasuke did not feel a bit of warmth. There was someone else that Yasuke had felt this way about in the past. When they were younger they climbed to the top of rolling, green grassy hills, and stared at starry nights together. There were a thousand stars in the sky and yet he only looked at her. They sat next to each other, sometimes she even placed her hand over his.    
  
But, but…   
But she felt farther away than the stars.    
That kind of unreachable person why did she even bother being by his side in the first place? She probably just wanted the company of a human being. It did not matter who.    
  
In other words, as usual Yasuke buried complicated feelings deep within his heart. Saying Kamukura reminded him of Junko, that same far away feeling, would probably make him sulk. Yasuke was pretty sharp tongued but he did not want to be insensitive or anything.    
  
Kamukura stirred in his sleep. No, wait he had been awake the whole time he was just that quiet of a guy. Which meant he had seen Yasuke gazing at his face in the early morning. Awkward.    
  
They both decided not to talk about it. They were terrible at talking, but they were great at not talking about things. It’s good to know where your strengths lie! 

They found an empty pharmacy, closed or abandoned they could not tell and Yasuke stitched his torn apart arm back together silently. Munakata’s sword had cut almost down to the bone and as usual Kamukura showed no emotion at all over it. 

  
“Be more careful, or the next time I’ll just let you bleed to death.”    
  
“I see you’re taking the hippocratic oath seriously,” Kamukura replied in a voice as arid as the desert.    
  
“Yeah, I killed you, you know. It’s not like I can suddenly start giving a shit about ethics now..”   
  
“Mm?”   
  
“The one who shoved your brain in a blender and erased your original self was me.”   
  
“Is that how they’re doing brain surgery these days? I don’t consider it that. I was already dead by then.” He had given up living as Hinata Hajime the moment he signed that release and submitted himself to the Kamukura project. Kamukura said with a face as expressive as a skull. “If anything all you’re responsible for doing is giving life to a corpse.”    
  
The relationship between the Doctor and the Monster. They kept referring to themselves in those two roles facetiously, but Yasuke did not want it to be that way. After all, the Monster and Frankenstein tried to kill each other in the end. “You can take your forgiveness and shove it up your own ass. I’m not interested.”   
  
“Eloquently put as always, if only you had chosen to become the Ultimate Poet rather than the Ultimate Neurologist your life would have been much easier.”    
  
“Well whatever, I’m not someone who deserves an easy life.” Yasuke grumbled as he finished wrapping a bandage around Kamukura’s arm. There was little he could do for the parts of his sleeve that were torn up, but considering Komaeda’s jacket was already in tatters it was hardly noticeable.    
  
Yasuke felt guilty, but Kamukura would not despise him for what he had done to him. Therefore, there was no release for that guilt. Frustrating. As they walked along the city streets at night, Yasuke suddenly turned around and poked out both of Kamukura’s eyes with two fingers again.    
  
“Ow.”   
  
“I told you to quit staring at me. I hate that talent being used on me.” He was referring to Ultimate Analysis, the talent Kamukura shared with Enoshima Junko.    
  
“Hm, is it that talent, or do you just not like being looked at in general? How do you feel when you’re being watched by others? Do their thoughts matter to you more than your own?” 

 

“Oh, now you’re trying to use the talents of the Ultimate Therapist, on the Ultimate Neurologist? I should poke you again.” Yasuke held his two fingers up threateningly.    
  
“Please don’t. It hurts.” Kamukura backed away. “You’re the second person to guess I was using that talent.”   
  
“Was the first Komaeda?”   
  
“Yes. How did you know?”    
  
“He annoyed Gekkogahara until she labeled him unfixable. Half the time it seemed like he was doing it on purpose to test her talents or whatever, and the other half of the time he had no clue what he was doing.”    
  
“But you never gave up on him, did you? Thank you for that.”    
  
Yasuke made a sound like he was dying at being given a compliment. “You should know it’s plain rude to stare. Didn’t anybody ever teach you any manners?” 

 

“...”   
  
“Well?”   
  
“That one was too easy that it would have been too boring to respond to.”    
  
“Oi, what? I’m too boring to insult now!” 

  
Kamukura realized he probably should not have done that. As much as he pretended not to possess them, Yasuke was full to the point of overflowing with those niggling little annoyances called feelings. The current Yasuke, felt abandoned by the one he cared about the most, that he was just too boring for her. “I just meant to say earlier that you don’t seem like the type to break a promise.”    
  
“Jeez, for a dull as hell guy with no personality you sure are a comedian.” Yasuke said, scratching at the back of his black, messy hair, “I wasn’t able to keep one promise.”

 

_ We’ll spend the rest of our lives looking after each other.  _   
  


 

  
Kamukura surmised that Yasuke was moping around like a guy who had gotten dumped. He wondered if he should get him ice cream or anything to cheer him up. He had almost all the knowledge in the world but almost no experience with close relationships. The one person he did have a close relationship with, well… if he tried to give Yasuke relationship advice based on that Yasuke would laugh at him.    
  
“The best course of action for now is to avoid dying at the end of the first week.”   
  
“Jeez, you use up all your brain to think up that plan?”    
  
“I mean, to play along and survive by the games rules until an opportunity presents itself to break the game.” Kamukura said passively. “We have to figure out who all the other players are, my guess is we’ll see a reappearance of the Ultimate Despairs.”   
  
“Eh? Shouldn’t they be better now. We put them in the program and everything. Wait, now that I think about if it we used the Neo World Program originally to condition them away from despair and back to their original selves how is that any different from brainwashing.”    
  
“I thought you didn’t care about ethics?”   
  
“I just like running my mouth.”   
  
“There’s no such thing as curing a trauma. It’s impossible to return to your previous state of beings. All the former Ultimate Despairs will still be carrying that despair with them… and considering the motives of the mastermind it’s likely she wants to push them back into their original characterization.”    
  
“Wasn’t that like what we were trying to do with Enoshima?”   
  
“...”   
  
“Don’t go all quiet suddenly! Jeez, you’re like a little kid that can’t stand when he’s been caught.”   
  
“Besides, I want to save them. If I had ever made it into Hope’s Peak as an official student, they would be my classmates.” He stopped for a moment letting Yasuke walk ahead of him. “You would have been my classmate too.”    
  
“No, you would have been with class 77-B. I’m class 77-A.” Yasuke scowled again. “I never got along with my classmates anyway. Somebody spread a rumor around that I was a bitter and antisocial jerk, I don’t know where anybody could get that idea.” 

  
  


“You distance yourself from others…Could it be you knew you were doing dangerous things and did not want anybody else to be caught up in it?”    
  
“No, I just don’t want to deal with annoying people, and loud brats who talk like they know everything are the most annoying.” 

  
Kamukura felt like Yasuke had just described the entirety of Hope’s Peak with that one sentence. ‘Loud brats who think they know everything.’ The were holding hands and walking next to each other, but still far away. Kamukura had no idea how to reach Yasuke. So, they just kept walking in silence. 

 

🦔

 

I disagree with my sister narrator.    
She sees things as far too black and white. For her there’s no truth in a lie, there’s no hope in despair, there’s no fiction within reality.    
  
The truth is opposites do not contradict one another, they complement each other naturally. Sure they might fight sometimes, but a world without conflict would just be plain boring.    
  
Waves that roll forward in the ocean are pulled back by an undertow of water, every advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a fall. Trees reach their arms up towards the light, but their roots can only grow in darkness. 

  
That was what the two of them were. 

Around the two of them,    
Illness is the doorway to health,    
Tragedy turns to comedy, 

They were always fighting with one another,   
They were each other’s only known peace.    
  
Dark Bright.    
Negative Positive.    
That was the kind of relationship they had. It was something so inconsistent and ill defined that it seemed to defy both words and meaning, it was a natural feeling that neither of them could describe but both of them knew they would be empty without. To each other, their presence was as necessary as air, and yet they also suffocated one another.    
  
The were close and yet far apart.   
They desired to be closer than anyone else,   
And yet they always pushed each other away. 

 

  
It was not a contradiction, it was just natural human behavior. Perhaps that was why they were always bickering. To everyone else they were inhuman monsters, a sword, and a cold blooded murderer. It was only around each other that they became painfully human.    
  
At the moment a gentle white tiger, and a hot-headed dragon were curled around each other sleeping together in the shadow of a particularly tall tree. Fuyuhiko stirred in his sleep, between his fluttering eyelashes he saw the sleeping face of Pekoyama. Her colorless hair that was usually tied back, fell freely around her, and in front of a soft face she would never make while awake. 

 

Fuyuhiko without thinking moved his hand to brush the hair away from her face, and tuck it behind her ear. He felt like he was seeing some unseen side of Peko, like coming to drink at a waterfall and seeing a naked goddess bathing through the mist. 

  
Then suddenly, the dreamlike haze lifted from his mind. Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko screamed. 

  
“So loud this early in the morning. Nobody is as energetic as you, young master,” Pekoyama said, soft and dignified.    
  
“I told you to quit it with the fake compliments already,” Fuyuhiko said, rough and vulgar. 

 

“There’s no way anyone could get away with lying to the young master. He’s far too cutthroat and brilliant a leader.”    
  
“You’re messing with me, huh? You’re totally messing with me. We wake up god knows where and the first thing you do is mess with your one and only childhood friend!” Fuyuhiko shouted at her. She was right he had woken up quite loud today. Pekoyama was so polite and composed around others, they all took her for a serious, considerate young lady. None of them ever knew she had a specific method of teasing others. Except Fuyuhiko, who knew her better than anyone else.    
  
“What the hell is this? O, seriously, what fresh hell have I woken up in?” Fuyuhiko said dragging his head over his face.    
  
Pekoyama placed her glasses on her face and averted her eyes, speaking passively. “I wouldn’t call waking up next to me hell exactly….”   
  
“Yeah, wait a second why were we sleep together? It’s not like when we were kids and you would crawl into my bed.” A behavior which Peko would have kept doing if Fuyuhiko had not insisted they sleep in separate rooms. “Ah, wait a second did we… Did I...I swear to god I’ll repent with my life for taking your innocence.”

 

Fuyuhiko was throwing his head on the ground and begging for forgiveness.    
  
Pekoyama muttered under her breath. “I’m a murderer so I was never really innocent anyway…” This was all a misunderstanding of course. Fuyuhiko and her even with mutual feelings had not even so much as kissed. Human relationships were far more complicated than just loving someone and being loved in return, or maybe it was just that way with them. “If only you had the spine to ask, then I would just give it to you.” 

 

“Huh, what?” Fuyuhiko was oblivious as usual. Between the two of them, Pekoyama considered Fuyuhiko to be the innocent one. Far too kind hearted to be a gangster, and oddly pure ever since they were children.    
  
So pure it was sometimes frustrating. “Nothing happened to worry yourself over young master, in fact I don’t remember how we got here.”    
  
“Yeah, my head hurts like a bitch. Is this a hangover? What was I thinking? Drinking, while underaged? Have I really become that kind of degenerate?” Fuyuhiko always attended class on time, never wanted to so much as kiss a person before marriage, and considered underage drinking to be immoral. 

  
“I think it’s much more likely our memories have been wiped.” They were both veterans of the killing game after all, and they knew about Enoshima Junko’s capabilities.    
  
Fuyuhiko in rubbing his head caught on to a bangle hanging around his wrist. He narrowed his one eye, the other was covered with an eyepatch that had a dragon on it. It was a pain in the ass losing an eye, but also scars made Yakuza look cooler so secretly Fuyuhiko enjoyed his eyepatch. 

 

_ Cannot leave Pekoyama alone. Not allowed to be more than three meters away from her.  _   
  
“What the hell? Are they trying to mess with me with a rule like that?”    
  
“I… I do not mind. Always being around you, isn’t troublesome for me at all.”    
  
“Tch. I keep telling you, you don’t have to always follow me around like that.” 

  
Pekoyama, suddenly felt melancholy though she could not express it. When she thought Fuyuhiko had died, all she wanted was to have him back, for things to go back to the way they were between them.    
  
She had forgotten, his and her circumstances were the ones that led them to their tragic parting in the first place. She thought given a little bit more time this time around, the both of them could change. But, they were both afraid of losing the other that they clung to each other. 

She had Fuyuhiko back, but things between them had not changed. Rather, it had stayed the same ever since they were children. That was why, their relationship could not progress, beyond childish days of being fond of each other and holding each other’s hand. That was why neither one of them could progress.    
  
They had been arguing about the same thing for years, but neither of them could advance. When Pekoyama drew closer, Fuyuhiko ran away. When Fuyuhiko wanted her by his side, Pekoyama wanted to be alone finding herself unworthy of such a place. They were like wind and water pushing and pulling at one another, and when they came together it was a storm.    
  
Yet, as destructive as they were there were those who found storms to be beautiful. 

Pekoyama wondered if Fuyuhiko ever once saw her as beautiful.    
She wanted him to, and yet she did not. She did not want his kindness wasted on a blood soaked girl. The more human Pekoyama became, the more guilt she felt for her own existence. 

 

“Hey, where’s your sword?” Fuyuhiko’s voice interrupted her quiet thoughts. 

  
“I don’t know where it is… Strange, I’ve had that sword always by my side since I was an infant.”   
  
“Who the hell gives a baby a sword? I swear to god if my parents weren’t already read they would deserve to die.” Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko in a fit of despair, had lost everything, his sister, his parents, and even his standing among his family. In a way he and Pekoyama were all each other had left. In another way, they were all each other had to begin with. Yet, he did not want to look at Peko as all he had left… because she never belonged to him in the first place. “Well, whatever as soon as I find something sharp I’m cutting my hand off.”    
  
“You Yakuza are far too quick to sever your fingers,” Peko tutted softly.    
  
“It’s the only way I can get rid of this stupid bangle! I’m not going to let this stupid thing force me to always be around you!”    
  
Pekoyama only crossed her arms, making herself look smaller. “I didn’t know you hated being forced to be near me so much…”    
  
“Peko, no that’s not what I…” Fuyuhiko wanted to put it into words. He wanted to say he only wanted Peko to be around him because she wanted to be, not out of some obligation, or loyalty, or because she was ordered to be. Yet, he could not find the words. It sounded so easy to say  _ never leave my side.  _ If this story were written by a romanticist, perhaps he would be.    
  
His world only consisted of just the two of them. Pekoyama was closer to him than anybody else, and yet he could not talk to her. What a lonely and silent world they lived in. 

 

He has had this nightmare several times before. He reached out to take Peko’s hand slowly, only for it to turn to pink blood. It splashed, and stained, and melted away, and Peko was no longer there.    
  
He had this nightmare several times before. He finally embraced her. He held Pekoyama in his arms but she was only a corpse. There was no warmth at all in her body. The touch he had longed for so much was completely cold.    
  
He had this nightmare several times before. Just as he reached out for her, she was pulled away from him. Just as he wanted her, she was stolen. She was always by his side but the moment he turned his head to look at her she disappeared.    
  
He was terrified of dreams like that. He was a fearless Yakuza already acquainted with death and violence and yet he was a coward. He had no idea what it was like to live without her by his side. Even with his parents and sister, he saw that they were people with lives of their own who would one day move away from him. Pekoyama even in the future was supposed to follow along.    
  
He wanted her to be her own person, and yet he was happy at the idea that she would never leave him. That was why he just did not think about the idea of losing Peko. He did not even acknowledge that as a possibility. The idea of her leaving him was unfathomable to him.    
  
He would not be Fuyuhiko, without Pekoyama by his side.   
She was more than his right hand, she was like his lung, or one of his ribs.   
He hated himself for it, but because they were part of one another he ended up looking like he was hating her. God, he could never hate her. The idea of hurting her made him want to stab a katana into his own dick. She was someone he would throw away his life away to protect.    
  
And yet, he always ended up hurting her like this. He saw tears in the corner of her eyes underneath her glasses. Pekoyama never smiled, but he had made her cry. Fucking shameful. Even if he bowed his head so hard he cracked it against the earth it would not make up for what he did.    
  
He silently watched her, unaware of what to say or do. He was paralyzed by fear of making it worse, and at the same time he knew if he did nothing he was a worthless sack of shit. He reached out to her, but fell short of touching her, because his fingers curled up before they could reach her face.    
  
And then, those assholes showed up interrupting him.    
Fuyuhiko turned his head around. Hinata Hajime, and some guy he did not recognize that looked like he had not slept in weeks. Fuyuhiko immediately wanted to tell him to eat more and take better care of himself, he was way too damn skinny. 

 

“Peko… you look nice. Like, like a person y’know.”  Hinata said, suddenly stumbling over his own words and losing Kamukura’s nonchalance in its entirety.    
  
“God that was awkward. She looks like a person, as opposed to what? An alien?” Matsuda, crossing his arms as he stood tall and thin right next to him.    
  
“Hey, shut up. She has issues with seeing herself as a person so I was just reassuring her.”   
  
“I keep telling you not to psychoanalyze everyone you meet. It’s like you’re looking down on them.” 

  
Pekoyama suddenly ran to close the distance between them, burying her head in Hinata’s chest. Hinata’s only reaction was to freeze and hold his hands up in the air. “Wh-what’s happening? Why is another person suddenly touching me? D-did I do something wrong? Hey, Peko I’m sorry I’ll apologize.”   
  
“This is why the only person you have romantic chemistry with is Komaeda, dude…” Matsuda said, averting his eyes from the disaster.    
  
“No, I’m just glad you’re alive. This is what friends are supposed to do when they see each other again, right?” Pekoyama said, as if she were simply mirroring the behavior. 

 

Hinata still kept his hands in the air. “Fuyuhiko there’s nothing going on between us I swear, don’t stare at me like some kind of demon.”

  
“Hmm? What do you mean there’s nothing between us? Didn’t you used to have a crush on me, Hinata?”    
  
“Do you have no common sense at all? Do the talented even think before they speak? Now Fuyuhiko’s gonna kill me for sure. This is the end guys, it was a pain in the ass but I didn’t want it to end so soon!” Hinata said flailing his hands around in the air.    
  
It was like the resurrected corpse Kamukura had finally come to life. Matsuda recognized it, he was acting like his old self. He pursed his lips for a moment thinking, the cold emotionless Kamukura around him, desperate to be liked Hinata around Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama. Then, he must change the way he acts around those he truly considers his friends. Matsuda decided to stop pouting, because it was not like he had a right to be that boy’s friend in the first place after what he did.    
  
When Pekoyama finally let go, Yasuke noticed how they both glanced at and then away from one another. “Did we interrupt something?” 

 

Hinata leaned down and whispered to him like they were gossiping, “A lover’s quarrel.” 

They interrupted the bickering of a tiger and a dragon. The war between heaven and earth.    
  
“I can hear you whispering idiot! Besides, how the hell am I supposed to kill you, your head is way too thick to ever smash.” Fuyuhiko snapped at both of them. He looked at Peko one more time and took a sharp breath but no words would leave his mouth. 

 

🦔

 

All four of them had stopped by a soda machine with nowhere else to go for now. Fuyuhiko had gone the maximum distance his bangle would allow away from Pekoyama. As Yasuke sipped a bitter canned coffee from the machine, Fuyuhiko suddenly asked him.    
  
“Hey, why am I such an asshole?”    
  
“I’ve asked myself that question so many times and I still don’t know the answer.”    
  
“I suppose some of life’s philosophical trappings are never meant to be answered.”   
  
“Hey, that was kind of smart.”   
  
“Just because I’m a Yakuza doesn’t mean I can’t be cultured!” 

 

Kamukura had explained to Fuyuhiko briefly who Matsuda Yasuke was. Another of Enoshima Junko’s victims, her childhood friend. They were also in the same year at school together, but all he had heard of Matsuda was that he was an aloof loner who spent all of his free time on his research.    
  


Matsuda spoke up. “I know what it’s like. You think because you’ve always been by their side since they were children, that you should understand them, but you don’t…” 

 

“If you compare my Peko to Junko in any way then I’ll kill you. At least I didn’t have a goddamn psycho as a childhood friend.”    
  
“That’s what I get for trying, I keep forgetting I’m not decent…” Yasuke barely reacted to Fuyuhiko’s foul mouth. He felt it would be a little hypocritical on his part. Besides, it was a really bad insult comparing Junko to anyone, fair enough.  “No matter how much you wish it you can’t be one person with someone, you can’t understand them like they’re a part of yourself. That kind of closeness, where you’re like the only two people in the world is probably unnatural.”    
  
It was like he was hiding from the world by comforting himself in Junko’s bosom. He tried not to think too hard about that metaphor.    
  
  


Fuyuhiko already knew there was something wrong with their relationship, but letting go was far too worse than clinging to something unhealthy. He wondered if they were just not meant to be. If Pekoyama belonged to the sky, and he belonged to the earth. They would always be divided by the horizon.    
  
To hell with that.    
  
“So you were Junko’s accomplice in crime?”    
  
“More or less.”    
  
“You’re an idiot.”   
  
“Yeah, I know.”   
  
“But, I think an accomplice is an ideal relationship. I’m not going to judge you for it. Peko and I did what we had to do to survive in the darkness.” Because, Fuyuhiko was born on the dark side of things. Even falling to Ultimate Despair was not that much of a surprise for him. That was why he was even able to accept people like Yasuke and Komaeda, because he saw them as similiar in nature. “People rave and rave about the sun, and the light of hope or whatever, but there are those who wouldn’t survive in the light. It would just burn them up.”    
  
He looked at Pekoyama from afar, her pale skin twinkling, her silver hair reflecting the light back. Fuyuhiko let his soft smile show on his face. “I don’t mind being stuck in the night too much. I’ve always liked the sight of the moon.” 

 

“Quit flirting, it’s gross.”   
  
“At least I have someone I can flirt with.”    
  
“You Yakuza really are cruel. It’s inhuman.” Yasuke said drily. He wondered why he tried to give relationship advice anyway, considering his own relationships were such a mess.    
  
“This situation really is annoying, but I guess I can’t complain if somebody tries to kill a guy like me. I just hope the others aren’t here, they’re just too good for this sort of thing.”    
  
“Wait, what about me?”   
  
“You’re lowlife scum, just like me.”   
  
“Oh, okay.” 

 

“This probably happened because we kept trying to go on at that school and live happily like normal even after everything we had done.” Fuyuhiko said, crushing the can between his fingers. He however walked up and put it in the recycling bin because he hated littering. “If we somehow survive this are you going back there?”    
  
Yasuke Matsuda was still guilty of two murders, and hiding the evidence in several other crimes. “...No.” He knew he should have run away from that place a long time ago, but for some reason he stayed.    
  
“It’s fine if you can only live in a world of darkness. Good people who did nothing wrong can live in the light, we’re just different from them. That’s what I always thought.” Fuyuhiko smoothed back his shaved hair with his hand. “You could get work as a back alley doctor. Our joint could use a guy like you.”   
  


“Quit trying to recruit me you criminal.”    
  
“I can’t believe I’m being called a criminal by a fucking criminal.”    
  
“What’s the difference between a criminal and a fucking criminal?”    
  
“Well, smart ass…” Before their conversation could continue, suddenly they both heard an explosion.    
  
They were surrounded by Monokumas who had appeared from nowhere. Kamukura was the first to react, he picked up the vending machine and tossed it into the crowd. A few of the Monokuma’s exploded but they were quickly replaced in their ranks.    
  
“What the hell are these…?” Fuyuhiko shouted.    
  
“A random encounter,” Hinata said, his voice becoming quiet, calm, emotion draining out of it.    
  
“Jeez, you sound like Chiaki. Take things seriously!” 

 

“If I take things too seriously they become boring.” Kamukura said, as he dodged the claws of one of the bears.He grabbed it by the face smashing it against the concrete and then threw it away before it could explode. “I was just wondering why we had not seen a single soul come out at night in this entire city.”    
  
Matsuda took a step back hiding behind Fuyuhiko. “What a pain, I’m going to have to patch you up when this is over.”    
  
  


“Says the guy who doesn’t even have to fight!” Fuyuhiko angrily snapped back at him. Though, as usual his words and feelings were different. He firmly believed from the bottom of his heart those from the world of violence should be the ones who had to fight. Yasuke was a crimminal but he had nothing to do with that world. 

 

Fuyuhiko noticed Pekoyama fighting ahead of him. Kamukura had broken a nearby sign, and gave her a chunk of iron piping to wield like a sword. Hinata too was someone who could fight like an inhuman monster. But Fuyuhiko seriously worried what would happen if he fought all on his own and took the burden all by himself.    
  
He would just get further and further away from his friends, the people who saw him as human. He would become a tool just like Peko used to see herself as. 

 

In the world Fuyuhiko wanted, he and Peko were fighting side by side as equals. That was the place he wanted to be most. Still he wondered even in the middle of this chaotic sudden encounter why he could not get there. 

  
Suddenly, as he was lost in the bare knuckle (bear knuckle) brawl he felt a swipe at his side. He looked down to see something soft and wet staining his pitch black suit. He reached down to cover his head.    
  
“Young master!”    
  
Even if he pissed her off, he was still her number one priority. The moment she heard him cry out in pain, she turned her head.    
  
“Pekoyama! Keep your eyes shut this is an order! Don’t you dare look at me!”    
  
The bangle around Pekoyama’s wrist read  _ cannot see blood.  _ The moment she saw any of it shed, she would be fatally poisoned. There was no revives or second chances, as this was not a video game but rather reality.    
  
Fuyuhiko was suddenly swallowed up by three bears. Pekoyama could not go by his side to help him. If she did she would die. If she did not he would die. She simply stared, wondering why whenever he needed her the most, or she needed him, they were always so far apart. 

  
Fuyuhiko’s world was just claws, artificial fur, dull throbbing pain from being eaten, and chattering teeth. He was so pissed off that he was going to be killed by the world’s most annoying mascot. It was embarrassing, and frustrating that he could still not fight for himself worth a damn.    
  
  


He killed so many people. He was supposed to stand on top of others as the yakuza head. Then why had he been carrying so much weakness with him around his entire life? Why did all those people die so a worthless runt could survive.    
  
The worst part of all was that he would not get to see Peko again.    
Even if he died and she got to live because of it, they would still not be together.   
As separated as the sky and the earth, as the moon and the sun.    
Always chasing after each other but never to meet.    
  
Fuyuhiko roared. He threw one of the bears off of him, looking more rabid than the mechanical bears. He could not pick up vending machines like Kamukura, but there was no way in hell he was losing here. Using his own dirty style of fighting, thinking only of surviving on his own he clawed his way back up to the top.    
  
He talked and talked about how he belonged in the world of shadows, the world of violence, he had been born and raised there after all. Yet, no matter how many times he denied it, even a bastard like him saw a light in the distance and could not help but reach for it.    
  
Maybe everyone was like that.   
No matter how much they pretended to be only one thing.    
He couldn’t give a damn about other people right now though.   
There was only one person he was thinking of.   
  
As he stood on the wreckage of a few mechanical bears he saw that the fighting had calmed down.    
  
“Young master…”   
  
“Keep your eyes closed that’s an order!” Fuyuhiko barked harshly. If Pekoyama would not value her own life, he would value it enough for the both of them. If she thought she was worthless, he would give her worth. He had already decided on that. Fuyuhiko walked over to her and grabbed the red ribbon tied around her neck. He quickly pulled it away and tied it around her eyes as a blindfold.    
  
With her eyes closed, she could feel his rough hands, brushing against her ears, and her face, and her cheeks started to redden just a little bit. She thought about the things that couples usually do when both of their eyes are closed.    
  
“You’re going to have to learn to be a blind swordsman.”    
  
“That’s impossible. This isn’t a manga.”   
  
“I don’t give a damn! Keep that blindfold at all times because…” Fuyuhiko suddenly took his hand in hers. “I’ll be your eyes from now on!”    
  
This was not a kiss but Pekoyama gently smiled at him anyway.    
When a tiger’s claws collided with a dragon’s fangs.    
Perhaps that could be their version of a kiss.    
  



	7. Are you Still Mine?

There are no villains in real life.  
I have to disagree with what my sister narrator says once again.  
She fancies herself quite the villain but please do not go along with her delusions.  
  
You know despite the fact that most people just want to live ordinary, happy lives, I think those same people desperately wish that villains would exist. It sounds cruel right, wishing such terrible people into the world? If people want to be happy then why would they wish for an existence that only causes misery?

People love good virtues like hope, and kindness, but they love despair and villains just as much. Perhaps it’s better to say what they wish for is an enemy. Perhaps it’s better to say what they wish for is evil.  
  
They want somebody to be opposing them. They want an existence to make life more difficult. Why? Because, life is already plenty difficult as it is, and for no good reason to, or maybe there is a good reason and nobody wants to face it.  
  
You know how they say most divorces happen because living near each other is so hard that even completely lovey dovey couples just grow tired of each other after a few years? It’s like that but with yourself. If you could start to hate somebody you loved enough to promise to spend the rest of your life with them, just because living with each other was a little difficult then imagine how hard it must be to live with yourself. Most people do not even like themselves. In fact, too much self love is considered a personality disorder.  
  
People have to live with themselves their entire lives. In the end there is no one to blame but themselves for their own misery. So desperately, they want to avoid looking at themselves. They seek someone else to blame. That is why they wish villains into the world.  
  
Villains are just the fantasies of normal, good people. They are as much of a fantasy as princes and princesses. There are no villains there are only human beings.  
  
Sakakura Juzo however, desperately wished for a villain to come into existence. He wanted the shining white knight he admired, to become the hero he always saw him as. He wanted somebody else, anybody else, but him to be responsible for that white knight’s demise.  
  
He saw her. Enoshima Junko, the villain behind the destruction of Hope’s Peak. The one who had blackmailed him and single handedly ruined the one good thing in his life. He saw her walking side by side with a young boy about her age, smiling. They laughed while telling each other stupid jokes. It was not the maniacal grin of a villain but rather, a carefree smile of a young girl enjoying the moment. That a villain like her could smile in such a normal way.

It terrified him. It scared him far worse than when she beat him down to his knees, and forced him to beg like a dog in front of a crowd mocking him. What scared him was the possibility that she might not be a villain after all. That look of admiration he recognized it, it was the same look he gave Munakata. They were dreamy eyes that whispered _maybe just being by this person’s side is enough._  
  
Enough talk about villains, Juzo wanted to think about his hero instead. Munakata Kyosuke must be a hero because he saved him. The one Juzo remembered saving him was almost nothing like the current strong, ideal Munakata that Juzo relied on.  
  
Munakata Kyosuke before coming to Hope’s Peak was a weak and sickly child.

Since birth he had been afflicted by albinism. His skin, hair, eyebrows and even eyelashes were all lacking color. He also was a rare case that inherited Chediak-Higashi syndrome, which weakened his immune system and made him susceptible to infection. He was as beautiful as falling snow, but there was nothing more fragile than snowflakes, and snow melted away easily.

He had been born weak, sickly and frail, his own mother tried to throw him away wanting a healthy child instead. He was only saved by his grandfather’s willingness to take him in. Simply put he just happened to be born unlucky, if he was a normal healthy child his mother would have loved him normally.  
  
This was why, Munakata Kyosuke always completely serious and straight laced acted like an old man even at a young age. This was why, Munakata Kyosuke believing himself born from darkness and shameful circumstances always believed there was a darkness within him he needed to repress. Aware of his dark side, he tried to be pure white just like his appearance.  
  
The Munakata that Juzo knew from his early days at Hope’s Peak was a hard worker, who believed he could conquer his sickly nature by effort alone. He was constantly coughing into his handkerchief, but he would smile right afterwards. As he was someone who had only been able to go to elite schools due to the scholarships he had earned throughout his life, he treated everyone fairly regardless of their circumstances. He was a gentle boy who thought those who had gotten lost, deserved to be saved.  
  
He even saw the corruption beginning to form in the shadows of Hope’s Peak, as they demanded more and more money from government grants and began to have budgetary problems. When they attended as members of the seventy fourth class, it was rumored the golden age of Hope’s Peak was over and the school was already in its decline. Munakata saw the signs of this before anybody else, but he wanted to save the school, because in his mind it was a school that everybody loved.  
  
Munakata who was always coughing, avoiding the sunlight, and keeping his head down so as to not bother others. The kind of guy that worked himself sick in the shadows for the sake of others.

When they first met, Sakakura thought _this kind of spineless wimp is the person I hate the most._  
  
Due to the fact that they ended up in the same class, there were rumors that the two of them were rivals circulating around the campus. The cool headed, soft, intellectual Munakata and the hot headed vulgar beast Sakakura.  
  
The truth was they barely talked to each other at first. Sakakura really did not like to bully others, so he just avoided people he did not like. If they tried to get close he scared them away. He was used to isolation anyway, his whole life he had been fighting on his own.  
  
One day, Juzo noticed in one of his exhibition boxing matches that there was someone with snowy hair sitting in the audience. Munakata was easy to recognize, there was no one quite like him in the whole school, perhaps the whole world even. That day Juzo wondered if Munakata had heard of Juzo’s dislike for him and was coming to cheer his opponent on. He punched that guy harder than he needed to that day and knocked him out in one round, thinking to himself how much he hoped Munakata was watching.  
  
He came to Juzo’s next exhibition match as well, and Juzo beat that one just as easily. Then, something strange happened, even when Juzo was just practicing in the ring throwing punches among the girls who declared themselves his fan club just because he was a muscular and handsome dude who happened to possess an ultimate talent (Juzo was flattered but he had little interest in them) Munakata was always sitting alone in the bleachers. A lonely colorless existence.

He started to think Munakata might be a fan of his, or just a stalker following him around. Either way, the idea of someone else thinking so fondly of him filled him with self disgust. That day that he realized it, he tried to put a stop to it. He took a longer shower than usual so everybody else would get impatient and leave, and then when he was sure Munakata was the only one lingering in the hallway he confronted him pushing him back against the wall.  
  
At the time Juzo was still fresh from the shower. His hair was dripping wet with water, and his naturally wavy hair stuck to his face. The only thing he wore was a single towel that tightly clung to his waist. Even with the towel, the places where his hips curved down were visible. His dark skin was pulled tight over his well developed muscles. As he stood broad shouldered legs a shoulder’s width apart, he looked completely different from the thin to the point of fragility boy lacking any color.  
  
“The hell are you always following me around.” Juzo said, punching the wall next to Munakata’s head hard to cause him to be rattled. “You got a crush or something? Sorry, not interested.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Munakata gave an oblivious tilt of his head. Even being threatened like this, he did not show any fear at all. “I was just worried about you. You’re so talented, and you work harder than anybody else… but so it’s like there’s something missing. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I started watching you.”  
  
“Listen, I’m sure you’ve got your own problems so you can keep out of mine.”  
  
“B-but we’re classmates. Besides as student council president it’s my job to take care of the entire class.”  
  
“You idiot we’re not even a class. Everybody comes to this school because they want to show off their worth as an individual. They all want to be the stars.”  
  
“W-well, even if the school is that way don’t you think it’s wrong? I think a school where we can’t get along with our classmates because we’re all pitted against each other is just wrong.”  
  
“Listen, just saying ‘this isn’t the way things should be’ isn’t worth squat. Nobody’s gonna give a shit about empty platitudes like that.” Juzo backed off a little bit to look Munakata in his eyes. They were an unnatural pale blue, almost looking silver. Those eyes were protected by delicate white eyelashes, that looked like snowflakes had fallen on them. He could see in high detail, those colorless lashes brushing against each other. He wondered if anybody had ever gotten this close to Munakata’s pale face before, from this close it would be possible to hide anything at all. “Why the hell are you still talking to me anyway, don’t you realize I’m threatening you?”

“Huh? Are you? It doesn’t seem that way.”

  
Juzo grabbed him by the tie and yanked him up until they were at the same height, and Munakata’s toes were not touching the ground. “Really. I’m not sure how to make it much clearer. I’m going to hurt you.”

  
“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would get violent with other people for no reason. That’s why I won’t get scared no matter how much you try to scare me.”

  
“Idiot. Saying pretty words like that to brutes like me just gets your teeth knocked in.”  
  
“Umm, Sakakura.”  
  
“The hell do you want?”  
  
“Your towel fell off.”    
  
“Tch. We’ll settle this later. If you show up to my next match, I’m going to beat you senseless.”

Juzo quickly threw Munakata to the side, and snatched his towel off the ground retreating to the locker room. He never once felt ashamed of his body, he was well muscled and handsome and yet for some reason he felt embarrassed being seen.

Munakata shouting after him obliviously. “There’s no reason to get so flustered, we’re both just guys,” only made it worse.  
  
His next match even after warning him not to come, Munakata was there in the audience as always. He stood out so much that it was like he was always standing under a spotlight. His colorless skin seemed to always shine in a way that made it impossible for Juzo to take his eyes off of him.  
  
Munakata looked so pure. He was full of good intentions. He thought the absolute best of others even when Juzo was trying to make him see the worst. As deathly ill as his unique complexion made him look, Juzo thought at the same time that oddly he was beautiful.

Juzo was sick to death of such a beautiful person always following him around. Always looking at him like he had worth. He was tired of being reflected in those unnaturally blue eyes, and getting lost into staring at them. That day when he fought against his opponent, Juzo pictured he was fighting Munakata in the ring.  
  
He wanted to smash that beauty apart like he was breaking glass with his bare hands. He wanted to color his colorless face in lack and blue. He could make Munakata’s high sloped cheeks collapse in on themselves. He could make his eyes so bruised that he could not blink his delicate eyelashes. Breaking things with his fist was easy. That was why, and the only reason why a worthless person like him was considered talented.  
  
He knocked his opponent out in the first round, but he got so into his fantasy about hitting Munakata that he forgot where he was. He crawled onto his stomach and hit him in the face over and over again. He was no longer boxing, this was just plain violence. The referee needed to pull him off before he could regain his mind. If it was an official match he would have been suspended and his career could have been in jeopardy.

  
Juzo muttered an apology to his opponent and quickly ran to the locker room. Hidden from everybody else in the world, he shoved his head into the toilet and vomited.  
  
“So there was something wrong after all. It was just like I suspected, I was right to be worried from the start.” The weak Munakata he had talked to earlier was almost completely gone, this one was cold, logical, decisive.  
  
Desperate, Juzo wiped his mouth in front of Munakata. He tried to stand up but his body was too weak. “W-wait, I’m not some kind of wimp."   
  
“Of course not, I never thought that.” He stood over Juzo, placing a hand on his back. "You were starving yourself weren't you? A form of self punishment." 

“Listen I… I just don’t want to think.”  
  
Munakata had been watching him all this time, that was why he noticed the empty look in his eyes when Juzo threw a punch. “Hey, Sakakura the truth is, you hate violence don’t you?”  
  
Juzo sought to numb his mind, not because getting hit was hard on a boxer’s body, or that he disliked pain, but he hated to be the one to throw the punches himself. He hated the faces other people made when he hit them. Even if it was an officially sanctioned boxing match, it was still violent. He hated himself when he lost control and hit harder than he meant to. He hated the fact that he never held back against anyone. He hated himself, and wished to punish himself, slowly, passively. 

Sakakura Juzo, only learned to fight because of his father. One day he got sick of his father beating him and he fought back. He fought his father every day until his father started to be afraid of him.  He decided not to take it anymore, from him or anybody else. If there were only two types of people in the world, those throwing punches and getting beaten, then he would be the one throwing punches. He was blessed with a big body that helped him follow his ambitions.  
  
He never lost a fight. He never got hurt, as long as he lived on the side of the strong. Yet, he could not stop feeling it was wrong. Even though he was strong, every time he threw a punch he could not help but think of his father. His worthless father who had no job and only knew how to beat on his son. He wondered what the difference was between his father, and him who only knew how to fight to survive.  
  
He hated violence because it reminded him of his father.  
No matter how many people praised him for his talents, he was conditioned to hate violence.  
He felt nauseous, like his own internal organs were rejecting him.  
H hated everything about himself who only knew how to fight.  
He hated his body that made him so strong and was only good for violence.  
Most of all he hated Munakata for always continuing to look at a worthless person like him.  
  
“Yeah. I hate it. I’m a spoiled little bitch who hates his own talent.” Juzo said, covering his head with his hands and lowering his head to Munakata to try to hide away from him. “But, it’s the only thing that’s good about me. If I’m not strong I’m going to be thrown away.”

Not only did he hate violence, but he was a hypocrite. Because fighting gave him a place in the world, because it told others he was worth something, he kept on fighting. He liked earning championship belts and being praised. He was so proud someone like him made it all the way to Hope’s Peak. He did not want to go to a normal school and be a nobody. He hated himself for something he chose to do out of his own free will, nobody was forcing him into this violent lifestyle but himself.  
  
He wanted Munakata to laugh at the pathetic boy that collapsed before his feet. He wanted him to realize that the true Juzo is nothing like the strong image he projects, he’s actually someone far weaker than everybody else.  
  
He felt something wet fall on his face. When he looked up, he saw Munakata’s colorless face covered in tears. That person was crying for the sake of someone like him. “If it’s too hard for you to use your strength for yourself, give it to me.”  
  
Munakata bent his knee and got down to Juzo’s level. He pulled Juzo’s head against his chest, and wrapped his arms around his neck. Juzo hated being close to others. Whenever he got close, something violent happened. He had never been touched in such a soft way before.  
  
“I’ll put your strength to good use, I’ll show you that your talents are something you can be proud of.”  
  
“But… if I’m useless to you, you’ll throw me away.”  
  
Munakata shook his head. “You’ll never be thrown away no matter what, because I don’t just want your talents, the person I want by my side is you Sakakura Juzo.”  
  
To be wanted as a person.  
To be found when he was alone.  
To be told the words he wanted to hear so desperately.  
Sakakura thought anyone would have fallen in love. At the time he did not think anything at all about it. His first love, it was a wonderful thing, like something from a fairy tale.  
His white prince.  
Sakakura wanted to become his strength. Not only because that person promised never to throw him away, but because he wanted to protect Munakata’s kindness. If he could fight for Munakata’s sake, then he could stay the same weak, but kind boy forever, and never be exposed to the world’s violence.  
  
Juzo did not care if he was fighting alone, or if he was frowning.  
He wanted Munakata to always smile at him gently like that.  
Just stay the same Munakata and stay by his side that was all he thought he needed.

When Munakata graduated from Hope’s Peak, he stopped coughing, and stopped shying away from others. He became a person much stronger than Juzo and learned to fight with a sword. Juzo admired Munakata more than anybody else, but at the same time it was oddly lonely.  
  
Munakata worked harder than anyone else, but he feared everything would be over the moment he showed any sign of weakness. Juzo was a little bit sad, watching the old Munakata disappear.  
  
If he had done his job and protected him. If he had become someone Munakata could rely on. Then maybe things would not have turned out this way. If Munakata was the hero of this story, Juzo wondered if that made him, the person who betrayed the person he loved the villain.  
  
🦔

 

“I’m just saying that child needs to be restrained. She’s dangerous. She’s even a danger to herself. I’m sure some of those cuts on her arms are self inflicted…”

 

“I-I’m not even into that kind of bondage play.” Tsumiki cried out, and then. “Wait, would it make you happy? You can tie me up if you like! You can even kick me around too!”  
  
“Tsumiki, honey, I know you’re trying but, every time you open your mouth you make things worse.” Chisa put a hand on her head. “That’s why it’s even more important that we have to help her! Kyosuke you dummy! You big meanie!”

 

Currently, Sakakura Juzo was sitting in between Munakata and Chisa having a loud fight over the fate of Tsumiki Mikan. She was one of Yukizome’s beloved students that Munakata vowed to protect for her sake, but she was also someone who assisted the Ultimate Despair in the past.  
  
From the moment they woke up, they were just aware of these memories.  
As if someone had tampered with their heads, or perhaps they fixed them.  
There were two scenarios, the retcon timeline established by Kumagawa Misogi which only happened in fake memories created by him. In this timeline the Ultimate Despairs and Yukizome Chisa were just innocent victims of mind control.  
  
The real timeline was one where the corruption of Hope’s Peak slowly brought about its first fall.  
The Kamukura Project.  
The death of the student council in a killing game.  
The subsequent cover up by the steering committee.  
The death of the steering committee at the hands of Enoshima Junko.  
Enoshima Junko escaping interrogation by using Matsuda Yasuke her childhood friend.  
The information leak about Kamukura and the reserve student protests.  
The betrayal of fifteen Ultimate Despairs in Yukizome’s Class.  
The death of Nanami Chiaki who tried to save them.  
Yukizome Chisa being captured and tortured and the trauma from that incident.  
Her decision to cover up the crimes of the Ultimate Despairs with Kumagawa Misogi.

The fact that in the end they were only saved by an ill begotten miracle.  They remembered all of this, the correct scenario of events. They also remembered that the tragedy had continued. Even though there were a few peaceful months after the school had been ‘saved’ the protests started up again.  
  
Then the Ultimate Hunt.  
Then the attempts to hide Ultimate Students that were now hated by the world.  
They remembered most of these events vaguely but now they were sure in their memories they had witnessed the destruction of their beloved school not once, but twice.  
  
It was like all of their efforts were useless. Juzo hoped that Munakata did not think that way. He wanted to tell Munakata that it was all his fault for betraying him. If only he had manned up and told him about Junko. He wanted to beg Munakata not to see himself as weak, not to hate himself.  
  
At the moment he did not say a thing. He was afraid of ruining the atmosphere. The moment after he realized his feelings for Munakata, Munakata introduced him to his best friend Yukizome Chisa. A girl that was always by his side. Juzo saw how close those two were, and knew they would only get even closer.  
  
It was natural to hate the person you were jealous of, but he never once hated Yukizome. She was so different than him, energetic, kind to everyone, always in a good mood. He was surly and always trying to pick a fight. Sometimes he thought, if only he had not been born with his strength, he could have become a cheerful and energetic person like Chisa. Most of all she was someone who made Munakata happy. She comforted him and made him smile when he felt like he was not enough. She was the one always encouraging him. Juzo wished he could do that, but all he ever did was pick fights with Munakata.  
  
She called him Kyosuke too. It was like there was no distance at all between herself in others. He could not hate someone who made Munakata so happy. He just hated himself. He was the one forcing himself in, making the perfect duo a trio. He was the one who was ruining the atmosphere. He used to be terrified thinking that if Munakata ever learned about his feelings, he would ruin the relationship between his two best friends.  
  
All because he couldn't bear to be alone. He clung to them when he knew he was unnecessary. He was the one who could not just be happy with being allowed to stay by Munakata’s side? Why was he not happy with that?

 

“I just don’t want any of them to hurt you? You’re always so quick to defend despair, whose side are you on anyway?”  

 

Juzo looked up from his thoughts and watched in stunned silence as Munakata raised his voice to Yukizome. It was something Munakata would never do. Even when she failed, all he did was scold her gently and warn her to be more careful.

 

Juzo stood up suddenly between them. He grabbed Munakata’s hand directing it away from Chisa. “Hey, what’s gotten into you? I’m the hothead remember, and Chisa’s a reckless idiot with no regard for her own life. We rely on you to be the one who keeps his head cool for us.”  
  
“It must look so easy to lead from the perspective of someone who only eve follows orders?”  
  
“Now you’re trying to piss me off. I ain’t Yukizome, I’m not gonna cry until you apologize to me, no matter how mean you are. Are we going to have to get into another fight again like in our schoolboy days?”  
  
“Hey, hey, I’ve already lost everything. The school I love. The people I wanted to protect. Am I going to lose you too Sakakura? Is Yukizome going to get herself killed trying to help other people, and are you going to force me to fight you?”

  
“N-no, look man I just wanted…”  
  
He wanted to know why he was acting so weird.

 _You aren’t my Munakata._ _  
_ _You aren’t the Munakata who found me when I was alone._ _  
_ _You aren’t the Munakata who told me the words I wanted to hear._

No, he already knew.  
He was pretending not to know.  
He wanted to keep pretending that this was not his fault for betraying Munakata.  
Of course Munakata was acting like he did not trust a single thing in this world.  
The people closest to him betrayed him.

  
Munakata left him without another word. He walked away quietly, like a ghost. Even when he was gone, he felt like he was still there in the room. Juzo looked over at Yukizome. “Usually you always broke us up when Munakata and I were about to fight like that.”  
  
Chisa had a talent for smoothing things over. She was the kind of person who could find something nice to say about anyone, that kind of hopeless optimist. She suddenly raised her bangle in the air, showing it to him.

_Cannot tell a lie._

“I have to be careful what I say. Even nice things can sometimes count as lies. Hey, Sakakura why do you think they gave me this bangle? Do you think I’m a liar?”  
  
It was true. Chisa always said nice things, she always smiled, even when she was forcing it. Sakakura sometimes thought about how unnatural it was nobody was in a good mood all the time.

 

“Do you think Kyosuke is slowly realizing that I’m not the person he thinks I am? That’s why slowly he’s starting to not like me?”  
  
Juzo could understand her feelings exactly, but they also frustrated him. Munakata had always clearly had feelings for Chisa, her whining about not being loved in front of the third wheel just felt like she was rubbing it in.  
  
No, he should be upset because his friends who were always so close were currently fighting at the moment. Why did he have to be such a petty person?  
  
“Don’t kid yourself. You’re too much of an idiot to be two faced. Everyone tells white lies from time to time, you’re not being punished for it.”  
  
Juzo said harshly, after he left to go talk to Munakata. He had already decided in his heart, he would force Munakata to apologize to Chisa. Those two would go back to being all lovey dovey, and he would stop being the one who ruined the happiness of his two closest friends.

 

🦔

 

 _If you have to earn a place by his side, then you won’t earn it no matter how hard you work._ _  
_ _You won’t be a human being to them anymore._ _  
_ _You’ll just be their dog._  
  
That was what that girl told him, the other Ultimate Despair Ikusaba Mukuro. She was just another villain to. She had no right to tell him what a human being was, because she was only a villain. He hated how ever since waking up her words would not leave his thoughts.  
  
What he hated most of all was how she seemed to be just like him. Always trying to earn her sister’s affection, by being strong for her sake and protecting her, in the end she always screwed up and made things worse.

 

 _You’re a disappointment just like me._  
  
No, she was not human. She was a wolf who killed people just for the sake of despair. Just because she wanted one person to love her, was a stupid reason to hurt other people. It was all her fault if she had just manned up and told her sister no instead of just letting her control her.

“Yo, man. I know you’re mad that Chisa hid all of that from you, but you can’t just be pissed off at her. You remember how I told you Enoshima Junko was innocent…?”  
  
He said facing Munakata’s back. He stared at his snow white hair. When Munakata turned around, his expression was as colorless and beautiful as always. So beautiful not even someone like Juzo could tarnish him. That was why he thought it was okay to just stay b his side.  
  
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about that for awhile. Logically, something doesn’t add up.”  
  
“Yeah, I lied to you. I knew Enoshima was no good, but I hid that from you. Because she asked me to.”  
  
He thought he could make it up to Munakata in some way. That if he stayed by his side one day he would get the chance to redeem himself. No, that was just his own selfishness. He just wanted there to be no possibility that Munakata would ever throw him away.  
  
He deserved to be thrown away. A disappointment that only dragged Munakata down with him. If only Munakata had put his trust in somebody better than him, then he would have become the hero he was meant to be. If only Munakata never saved him, never told him those words he needed to hear, if only he saved someone else instead.

  
“You knew she was suspicious. If only you hadn’t trusted me, you could have stopped her. It’s all my fault okay, so don’t blame yourself. Just blame the useless baggage. The coward who turned on you…” Sakakura felt like he was begging.  
  
“Sakakura, I know you’re an emotional one but even you would not do such a thing without a reason. If you really were intending on betraying me, you would have kept hiding it. I know you’re better than that.”  
  
“You do…?” Juzo’s voice cracked.  
_No you’re wrong._ He wanted to say. _That’s exactly what I wanted, I wanted to keep it a secret forever._  
  
“I know you better than you know yourself after all.”  
  
“She blackmailed me into doing it. She had… a secret about you.” If Munakata knew he let hope’s peak destroyed for such a stupid reason, he would not just despise him, he would also laugh.  
  
“You were just protecting me, weren’t you? You thought you had to lie to me to protect me, or Enoshima would hurt me.”  
  
Munakata was still seeing the best in his actions.  
The cold and closed off Munakata.  
Perhaps the old Munakata was still there after all. It was just, he could not show himself to Juzo, because Juzo made himself impossible to trust.  
  
Yes, it was all his fault.  
Yet, Munakata was being kind to him. Even after he betrayed him Munakata would not throw him away. He was so happy.  
  
“That’s natural for you to think that way."  
  
“What?”  
  
Suddenly, Munakata kicked Juzo’s legs out from under him. Juzo fell back on the ground. He remembered the first time Munakata and him had talked seriously from the heart, Munakata got on his knees and went down to Juzo’s level to embrace him so he did not feel alone.  
  
Now, he had kicked him down to a lower level, and stood high above him. He brought his foot down hard on Juzo’s chest as if he were punishing him. Juzo looked up in Munakata’s eyes, and once more, saw no color at all.  
  
“Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one who’s responsible for your strength, remember? This is all because I didn’t tell you how to use it the right way. Even if you fail, it’s my failure not yours.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I’ve kept my promise, ever since that day.” That romantic promise, _I’ll become your strength. Use your strength for me._ Didn’t that mean that Juzo was being used to? “A question. Who is my most loyal underling? Are you still mine?”  
  
“I… I want to become your strength Munakata. I'm yours."  
  
“Good answer.”  
  
He removed his foot and walked away leaving Juzo there on the floor. Juzo punched the ground forcing himself to stand up. He should be happy, that Munakata accepted him, that Munakata still wanted to use him.  
  
He should be happy to be useful.  
He had no idea what this feeling was.

He watched Munakata walk over to Chisa. He gently put his arms around her. “I’m sorry, I was just scared of losing you again, but that’s the same way you feel about those children right? I’ll protect you, while you’re protecting them…”  
  
Munakata was a hero. A dashing white prince.  
Yet for some reason the words _I’ll protect you_ sounded so disgusting coming out of his mouth.  
Even though he had wanted to hear Munakata say those words about him.

 _What feeling is this?_ _  
_ _Whose fault is this?_ _  
_  
Tsumiki Mikan suddenly snuck up from behind him. She seemed like a typical ditz, completely in her own little world, but her eyes were oddly observant. “Hey! Aren’t you lonely?”  
  
“No, I’m not lonely.”  
  
“Well, I’m lonely.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Liar.” Mikan put a finger on her cheek. “I used to think that way. As long as I’m never alone I can’t be lonely. That’s why even being hated is fine as long as there are people near me… but… it’s all worthless. If you don’t hear the words you need to hear it’ll never bear fruit.”  
  
“I am lonely,” Juzo said, even when he was by Munakata’s side he was still lonely. Even if he was allowed to stay at his side for the rest of his life it would still be lonely. It was never enough, not even once. Munakata gave him so much, he gave him a place to belong and he always wanted more.  
  
He could not understand him. His best friend in the world and he understood nothing about him. He only ever thought about himself. He only knew two things about himself. He was alone, and he was incredibly lonely.  
  
He did not want to be like this. He did not want to be someone who needed others so much.  
He wanted to be strong and confident on his own.  
  
He did not want to be the kind of person who could be alone even when surrounded by two loving and supportive friends. He did not want to be that hopeless.  
  
“I’m so lonely.”  
  
“Liar,” Mikan repeated.


	8. The Princess and the Goth

* * *

A man stood in defiant silence against the backdrop of the night sky, which was like an all consuming void of black threatening to devour him. Waking up all alone in a city so empty it could be called the mausoleum of the damn, most would cower in fear. Living beings are living beings because they live in groups. Animals survive by being one with the herd.  
  
To him, even if he was alone, or if people were not kind to him he was completely fine. He had long ago abandoned the desires for friends and family. He never once took a bite of the forbidden fruit of knowledge. How could he, who doesn’t deem others such as friends or family necessary be called human?  
  
He was someone who had the greatest reverence to nature, but his very life was in defiance of nature. He was someone who never should have been born. A cursed existence from cradle to grave.

Animals form connections, and bond together in packs as a form of survival. There was no more enviable existence than the sheep amongst the herd. He was not someone able to even be called a black sheep. He was far lower than that. He was a wolf who hunted the flock from outside, and arrogantly thought someone like him willing to kill for his own survival was worthy to live.  
  
He was no more than a ravenous beast howling at the moon. He could not possibly be called a human being.  
  
As he stood there, his neck was surrounded by a glorious mane. He wore a fur collar which could be pulled up as a hood around his head. Underneath the fur collar, a tattered tyrian cloak, a color made from the blood of royalty billowed in the wind behind him. He wore a black overcoat stitched together in several places with large ‘x’ shaped stitches. His combat boots reached up to his knees, were covered in several leather belts ad golden buckles. He also had several more belts tied around his arms. His pants were held up by a combination of four belts.  
  
He obviously had a reason for wearing so many belts. Yes, a reason, and a good one too. Those leather belts were restraints, the same way a straight jacket functioned. If he buckled them all together, even a rampaging beast like him would be stopped.  
  
He was a cold and heartless villain, it was true, but he still wanted to give every hero who tried to slay him a fair shot. If he ever fought with his full power the world would be eliminated simply by his thinking it. Therefore, he needed to seal off his power at all times.

Besides, fighting a battle with your true power restrained was far more fun. He who was so unnatural wanted to feel like a part of nature too. He wanted to feel what an animal struggling to survive would feel like. Then even an exile from the cycle of reincarnation like him would be able to respect life.

 **Name:** Tanaka Gundham  
**Talent:** Ultimate Animal Breeder  
**Likes:** Four Dark Devas of Destruction  
**Dislikes:** Earthly Life  
**Mentality:** Minus

 

“Kehehehehehe, you would dare awake me in the dark hour? Don’t you know my domain is the night? When the moon reaches the top of its axis in the sky, the gateway to hell will be opened and my powers will be at their strongest.”

 

Tanaka Gundham boasted.  
There was no one around to hear him though, so he looked a little silly. I’m far too nice a girl to describe how silly he looked.  
  
Narrating this way, yeah it’s kind of exhausting. I am not sure how Gundham keeps it running in his head all the time. There might truly be something wrong with him.  
  
He had woken up alone, and had been wandering the city streets for hours when he came across her. The sleeping princess. A girl with long blonde hair, tied back in a black bow. Her outfit resembled a school uniform of a different country, but it was made of much finer materials than Gundham’s rags.  
  
At that moment Gundham dropped his devil may care attitude. He no longer laughed boastfullly in defiance of the night. As if all of it before had just been an act. The real Gundham, looked utterly helpless before the sleeping girl’s condition.

 

Sonia Nevermind was asleep in a pile of stuffed animals. Animals of all kinds surrounded her, tigers, lions, sloths, bears, monkeys, giraffes, practically every stuffed animal he could salvage from a nearby toy store. All of them except for bears, because he was starting to dislike bears. They were animals of every color as well. The stuffed toys were like guardians of her innocence.

 

If Gundham really was a special person as he was constantly bragging to be, then perhaps he could have made those animals come to life as his thralls and obey his orders to protect her with their everything. He was not a special person, he was not even particularly cursed. There were special people in this world, and there were those born bearing curses. He knew those people existed, because he had encountered Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
He was not cursed. He was just a whiny brat who had fallen to despair because of his intolerable mother. How unspecial of an existence he was always became apparent when he was faced with the sleeping girl.

  
He entered the killing game to save her, but that did nothing in the end.  
He woke up on the first night next to her, but no matter what he did she refused to wake up.

All he could do was carry her body to somewhere safe and hide her away. It was always the same, in the past he tried to help her escape her burdens, the ‘curse’ she was born with and he only made things worse too.  
  
Tanaka Gundham knelt in front of her in reverence. He reached forward to gently caress her face only to stop himself short. He spotted the silver bangle from his wrist. It was a magical silver charm forged in the tenth circle of hell,therefore it was even capable of sealing off the powers of a high level demon like him. The words of his forbidden action flashed across it. _Cannot touch flesh to flesh._  
  
He stopped himself just short of touching her sleeping face. She really was a sleeping beauty. He had seen that face covered in tears before, but never had he seen such a peaceful expression on her. Even so he thought it was better for her to return to the waking world. The world of her dreams must have been much more beautiful than this ugly and craven world could ever be, but when he saw her for the first time… he thought…

 

 _Human beings can really be this beautiful?_  
He who was afraid of everyone else. Who was afraid of connection. To him, she was someone who made the world more beautiful just be being in it.

  
Nature was beautiful because everyone had a role. There were no unnecessary elements. Even those who died and were eaten, gave their lives the one who devoured them could live another day. Humans were quite ugly, because there was such a thing as an unnecessary human. They were tossed out when they were unneeded, isolated, they could live without touching a single person’s life.

  
Humans committed suicide because they knew nobody needed them in the world, just like his useless mother. Animals struggled to live, they never resigned themselves to death. They never insulted life or gave up on life like humans did.

  
Life was so precious, even an insignificant life like his was still precious.  Even all alone, as a poisonous existence, he still wanted to live. Yet, from the moment he met her a life without her in it suddenly did not seem like living at all.  
  
“Princess, no matter how many of the forbidden spells I chant you won’t wake up. I’ve exhausted all of my dark magics to break your curse.”  
  
There was one he had not tried yet. If he touched her lips, he would die. The magic of first love, and a first kiss, a one time only feeling. He wondered if someone like him could die for the sake of a person he loved. If he could bring her back with that sacrifice, his worthless life might finally be worth something.  
  
He leaned forward tilting he head up by touching her hair with his bandaged hand, and then closing the distance between himself and someone else for the first time-

  
“Tanaka! Finally, I’ve found someone else. Huh, what are you two doing there? You’re not even married yet.”  
  
Caught by surprise Tanaka dropped her and then pulled his head back and screamed. You might call it the howl of a ravenous wolf, but he sounded much more like a scared little kid who had been startled.

 

🦔

 

“Ohhhh, that fluffy Deva. L-l-l-l-l-l-let… L-let me pet it! Let me pet it! Let me pet it please!”  
  
“What a terrifying girl you are. Even my demon beasts are scared of you.”  
  
“That snake! So scaly! So smooth! Let me pet it! Let me pet it! Let me pet it!”  
  
“Even the snake which crawled into the garden of eden and deceived mankind trembles in fear before you.”  
  
“A stray cat! Look, look see! Mr. Meow come to me please! I’ll pet you! I’ll love you more than anybody else! I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life. You don’t need to spend another day in hunger.”  
  
The stray cat ran away from Medaka in fright, fleeing to hide behind Gundham’s leg. He picked it up holding it the proper way, and stroked its fur to calm down its nerves. “I see. Hell beast, to have chosen me as your master you must have been a saber tooth tiger in your past life. After being reincarnated you’ve finally found your master again reborn as a teenager in the modern era, huh?” He said as he affectionately petted behind his ears.  
  
Medaka closed her eyes, still trying to look dignified after having not been chosen. “Hmph...A girl like me has never begged even once in her life.” The next moment she fell down to her knees and started to tug at Gundham’s feet. “Hey, tell me why all of the animals like a scary guy like you but they don’t like me, Tanaka? I’m a cute girl...I have feelings too... “  
  
She resorted to begging almost immediately!

 

While both Tanaka and Medaka were making a fuss, in the background Sonia’s eyes fluttered. She slowly woke up on her plush bed of animals and innocence. It was not a prince’s kiss that had woken her, but rather the doing of the mastermind. It would be boring to have her sleeping the whole game after all.  

 

That was the only reason she was saved.  
Well, whether people are saved or not does not matter at all.  
I used to be obsessed with saving other people but that’s just arrogance.  
After all, most people get saved only to die later anyway.  
That’s just a pointless story, not worth telling.  
  
Sonia stretched and yawned. She wiped the sleepiness from her eyes. Her two companions took a moment to notice her, because Tanaka was busy trying to shake Medaka off his leg.

 

“Tanaka… you haven’t worn your hair down since first year. I… remember…it was so cute back then.”

 

Gundham staggered back in complete shock at Sonia being awake. Rather than expressing his joy, he immediately got flustered and put both of his hands in his hair. He slicked back his black hair with gray streaks. Hands still in his hair he turned away from her. “Hmph.”  
  
Medaka finally stood up once more. “Huh? Isn’t she your friend? Why are you ignoring her?”  
  
“Feh. Humans are such foolish creatures. No human can ever be worthy of being a friend of a demon from the eleventh hell.”  
  
“Wait, how many hells are there exactly?” Medaka said taking him a bit too seriously. “Wait, no humans aren’t foolish. They’re really good.”  
  
“Animals are far superior.”  
  
“Wait, but aren’t humans just animals, too? D-do you really feel that way or are you just making things up for your chuuni act...”  
  
“Silence! I didn’t come to this city to debate philosophy with you. If I were to utter the true words I hide in my heart, you would be driven to madness beyond language. Besides, there’s enough navel gazing in this series already.”  
  
“I’ll stop bothering you if you let me pet your hamsters.”  
  
“That is an unkind thing to say, you fiend…! How dare you call my Four Dark Devas of Destruction, “hamsters”!”

Sonia smiled. She was always happy when her classmates were getting along in front of her.   
She was truly looking forward to spending normal days with her classmates. She thought if she was around those people, if she was normal in their eyes that was enough.  
But in the end, she was never able to get close to her classmates.  
  
There was always a clear line between “them” and “her”. Never for a single second when around them did she forget who she was.  She could not be friends with them, as being friends required her to be a person first, and a princess second.   
  
The closest were the days she spent with Gundham. Due to the fact that he avoided everyone in the class, he was a loner just like her. She was kind to everyone else, popular, admired by her peers, and yet she was still alone. He was rude to everyone, cut them off, constantly said he did not need anyone but he was still lonely.  
  
She thought with someone like him, she might finally find her normal days. In the end though she never once tasted those normal days. In her efforts to escape, she became something far worse. She became despair itself. From now on she would be alone, not because she was loved and admired too much but because she would be hated if anyone had found out the truth about what she did.  
  
When Kumagawa’s ‘Bookmaker’ pierced her heart, she was stripped of her ability to be a princess. If she was not a princess, then she was nothing at all. So she slept.   
  
“Tanaka. I feel quite faint. Could you be so kind as to give me your hand.”  
  
“I already told you several times Dark Queen… my touch is poison. If I were to offer you my hand, you would feel the same poison coursing through your veins in moments.”  
  
“It is fine because I carved an anti-poison rune in my flesh.”  
  
“Your light magic cannot hope to purge the dark magicks in my soul. It’s impossible. The more you shine the light, the more the darkness thrives in its shadow.”  
  
“What an incredibly deep thing to say. Tanaka, is this more of your japanese wisdom? Then, what if I cast away the light and become darkness itself, then would I be able to take your hand without being poisoned?”

“Dark Queen… What arrogance. Do you really think both the realms of light and darkness belong to you?”

“Oh, I am sorry I was not trying to be arrogant. I suppose I still have a lot to learn about the occult…” Sonia said, closing her eyes and giving an innocent smile.  
  
Her expression was so cute, that Gundham suddenly grabbed the scarf around his neck and pulled it up to his nose to hide the lower part of his face.

  
“I don’t understand what you two are saying at all… Is it my fault? Do I have communication issues?” Kurokami Medaka suddenly felt out of place, like those two were talking in a language she did not understand. “This reminds me of when Zenkichi was in middle school, and he dyed his hair and kept saying he was chosen by hell…”

 

“Ah, I remember. The level zero devil. If only he had asked to be my apprentice, I could have shown him the truth of this world…” Gundahm said, crossing his arms. He had covered both of his hands entirely with bandages rather than just one as usual.  
  
“Gundham. Is it not traditional to introduce me.” Sonia said, passively vying for his attention as she stood up on her own.  
  
“Of course.” Gundham suddenly struck a pose, getting on his knees in front of her. “This is the queen of darkness. The night skies of her domain are filled with the piercing screams of her citizens.”  
  
Sonia smiled, as if not hearing his dark words at all. “My name is Sonia Nevermind. I am a foregin exchange student from a small European kingdom called Novoselic. I may cause trouble here and there, but I hope we can get along well.”  
  
“Princess here is the Utlimate Princess. To acquire that title, she had to scale a tower of corpses, and let her soul give way to depravity. On the blood red moon, she participated in a ritual called the banquet of darkness, and sacrificed everything to obtain everything.”  
  
Medaka suddenly clapped her hands to her cheeks giving a girlish squeal of delight. “A princess? Like a real life princess? Do you live in a castle and everything? That’s so cute.”

Medaka looked back and forth between the radiant Sonia, and the black Gundham. The princess and the goth.  
She was happy someone like Sonia had such a friend. She could not imagine what a lonely life she would have led if it were not for Zenkichi.

  
“Hmph. Such ignorance, Kurokami.” Tanaka was having a lot of fun with the fact that Medaka’s name Kurokami, translated to “Black God” literally. “Are you not a princess yourself?”

“Huh? I’m not a princess or anything. I don’t like being called that either. I’m just the heiress to a rich family…” Medaka trailed off, not wanting to mention that that family may no longer exist anymore. If she could go on without acknowledging that fact, she could continue to smile.

  
“I do not care who you are. Now that we have met, we absolutely have to be friends.” Sonia closed the distance between them, and immediately took both of Medaka’s hands in her own. “Is there anything you need? I am a girl who would do anything for the sake of her friends.”

Medaka did not see anything behind Sonia’s friendly smile. It was not her habit to doubt others. “Actually, I’m looking for my friend. She’s really short and her hair is blue, and she likes to laugh… or maybe she doesn’t like that. She likes to eat… or maybe not. I don’t really know what she’s like actually…”

“Well, even if you don't understand someone you can become friends with them.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too!”

 

“People are lost unless they find each other.”  
  
“Yeah! When a person meets another person, that’s a story!” Kurokami Medaka was excited in quite a giggly way, to meet someone who seemed so close to sharing the same beliefs at her.  
  
Meanwhile, Tanaka cowered in the background. “T-this is too much light! A being of darkness like myself is going to be burned away until nothing but ash is left.”  
  
“Fear not for I will guide you!” Sonia said, taking the lead between the three of them. Even though she had no idea where she was, or what direction she was going, she spoke with such confidence. “Guiding my people along the right path is the duty of a ruler.”  
  
Medaka looked over to Gundham. “You both speak very dramatically…”  
  
“Keh! What words! Like you’re one to talk!” Gundham snapped back. He put the cat he was carrying down finally and followed after them.

 

 **Name:** Sonia Nevermind  
**Talent:** Ultimate Princess  
**Likes:** Occult / Japan  
**Dislikes:** Sour Plums  
**Mentality:** Special 

 

🦔

 

“So, Kurokami. Your true love is a childhood friend you made a promise to marry when you were both just kids, but secretly you both lived your entire lives believing in that promise?”  
  
Sonia and Medaka were engaging in ‘girl’s talk’ as they walked together. Gundham lagged a few feet behind them, muttering a dark chant underneath his breath and looking in general like he wanted nobody to go near him.  
  
“Umm… Well, it’s not really like that. I asked him to marry me when we were both two years old but then he turned me down. Then he asked me to marry him fourteen years later. I have no idea why he waited so long, I guess he’s just tsundere or something…”  
  
That girl doesn’t even understand what tsundere is!  
  
“That’s nothing like the dramas I’ve watched… Did your childhood friend secretly turn out to be a serial killer? Or a dark warlock with an angsty past involved with blood sacrifice and the world of the occult so he can get revenge?”  
  
So dramatic! Kurokami was often accused of being so high on her pedestal that her head was in the clouds, but these two were both in outer space. “N-no… nothing like that…” The eccentric girl forced to play the role of straight man was struggling. “Don’t you have a childhood friend?”  
  
“I’ve never had a friend in my life. No siblings either, because we would have had to kill each other for the right to inherit the throne.”  
  
Kurokami Medaka slowed her pace for a moment so Gudham could catch up to her. She grabbed him by the scarf and yanked, interrupting his mumbling. “You and Nevermind get along so well. Why don’t you call her your friend, you edgelord?”  
  
“Edgelord is the highest praise you could give Tanaka the forbidden one, who lives his life all alone on the edge.”  
  
Kurokami Medaka just sighed. The straight man was a tiring and demanding role.  
  
“Allow me to speak without my usual flourish.”  
  
“Oh, is that called flourish now? I thought it was just called being a baby.”  
  
“The black queen is kind to all. She is even kind to people she dislikes, and people undeserving of it like myself. As a ruler she has to focus on all of her subjects. She cannot afford to see people as people.” He grabbed the scarf around his furry collar, and pulled it up over his nose once more to keep his expression hidden to the world. “It would be foolish, to mistake her all-embracing kindness, as genuine affection for me.”

Medaka increased her pace to catch up to Sonia once more. Her speed limit did not allow her to go faster than a light jog. “Nevermind, if you’ve never had a friend in your life then I’ll become friends with you.”  
  
Sonia tilted her head to the side. “I know I’m just an exchange student, but shouldn’t you call me senpai?” If Medaka was more observant of people she might have detected something underneath the surface of Sonia’s words.  
  
“Oh, senpai then. I never wanted to be a princess either. I want a normal love. I wanted to be a normal girl. I just wanted to be a normal girl. I wanted to laugh, cry and shout freely, like anyone else. I just wanted to be a normal cute girl. It doesn’t matter who we are. We could have a normal friendship.”  
  
Sonia Nevermind looked at Kurokami Medaka’s extended hand. If she took that hand perhaps she could finally be saved. On the outside she was a calm and dignified ruler, but inside her heart she was a princess locked away in a box. A princess that wanted to be saved. She wanted someone to climb her tower. She wanted someone to find her.  
  
But, that desire…  
Is what caused her to despair in the first place.  
Sonia placed her hand on her mouth, and gave a smile that looked down upon others. “How… cute.”

 

“Huh?”  
  
“Why do you think I became a princess?”  
  
“Umm… You were born with a special birthmark that made you the hero of the land?” Medaka really did not get this Chuuni stuff ut she was trying her best.  
  
“Destiny. I became a princess because I was born a princess, simple as that. I was born for a reason, and that was to lead my country.”  
  
“B-but, you’re a person too even if you are a princess…”  
  
“The lives of humans are shaped by destiny. Just because we make an effort to become someone else, we cannot escape the person we were born as. I was born to be a princess to my country, and its people. If I were to die, it would be meaningful to my country and my people. So, I do not desire for anything else. This life never belonged to me in the first place.”  
  
“Isn’t that a little too much pressure for one person?”

  
“I’m a princess before I am a person.” When Sonia removed her hand she was still smiling, but Medaka did not see a trace of happiness at all in that smile. “I was born to inherit my country. You were born to inherit your company. Don’t you think we were both already born with far more than anyone else? And yet, you still want more?”  
  
The next words rattled in Kurokami’s ears, as if someone had shot a gun right next to her eardrums to make them bang until they exploded.  
  
“Don’t be so spoiled.”  
  
What is that.  
Really, what is that.  
What is that. Really, what is that. What is that. Really, what is that. What is that.  
Really, what is that. What is that. Really, What is that. What is that. Really, what is that.  
What the heck is that????  
  
Medaka heard the sound of something spilling out.  
If human beings were composed of words like characters in a story. If their insides were represented by kanji, then suddenly every single black kanji poured out at once.  
She could hear the sound of a typewriter struggling desperately trying to rewrite her.  
It was rewritten so many times that the page itself turned black with ink.  
She heard the sound of something crashing down.  
It was the sound of her own nerves crashing down dominos in a chain reaction. The dominos with the words, “Don’t”, “Be,” and “So Spoiled” written on them all came crashing down with an avalanche. She wanted to unhear those words. She wanted to erase those words from their vocabulary. She wanted to cut off her ability to perceive words. She wanted to smudge all the ink. She wanted to blur all the meanings.  
Spoiled, the word played in the back of her ears.  
Don’t. Be. So. Spoiled. They clattered as they were crashing down.

Hey, was she born for a reason or not?  
It didn’t make any sense.  
It was senseless.

  
It was like she was being scolded by her old self. The Medaka of the past was probably disgusted with how weak she had become.  
  
Medaka suddenly wanted to break something. She kicked a nearby trash can as hard as she could. It rolled a bit before the lid fell off and it spilled its contents on the street in front of them.  
  
There was a boy who had been hiding in the trash can. He was tall, with an average build, and a bored expression. His short black hair was disheveled, with a noticeable antenna. He wore a suit as equally as untidy as his hair. ‘Umm… Let me make one thing clear. I’m not some weirdo who hangs out in garbage cans, okay. I just like hanging out in cramped spaces. Small spaces have differences too… How the space feelings, the temperature, the hardness… What fits best for you… It’s all a matter of trial and error.”

He began to rant to himself without making eye contact with the others. Apparently, this was his version of carrying on a conversation.  
  
Both Gundham and Medaka looked at one another confused. Sonia, however had a completely different reaction  her eyes suddenly sparkling. “I know who you are! Kirakira-chan! The sparkling justice! The killer of killers who takes down other murderers for the sake of justice.”  
  
There was absolutely nothing sparkling about this guy at all. Taumi skulked at her. “Oh, you know about me? But I don’t… really want to be known at all.”

 

“It is essential that serial killers be mysterious! What an expert, yes! You’re a true psycho killer!”

Medaka felt the need to straight man again. “Umm, why does she sound so excited?”  
  
“It’s as I declared earlier, the more intense the light the darker the shadow. The Black Queen always needed to remain pure of heart for her people, because of that she has an interest in the taboo, occult, serial killers.”  
  
“Senpai. If that person is a murderer you probably should not get so close.”

“Please hold on! It is a mistake to refer to these people as mere murderers! COming in contact with a value system that differs from your own is a very important matter. Serial killers… their value system is very different from the normal… What a marvelous existence! Haaaah! I’m totes intrigued!”  
  
“Yeah, some people like… kill to cope.” Takumi spat out after her in his unpleasant voice. “Well, not me but… just hypothetically I imagine other people could.”  
  
“Kirakira-chan must have been born a killer, the same way you and I were born princesses. He cannot resist what he is! Haven't you heard of the Six cursing names, and the seven killing names? There are those in this world who become murderers simply because of the family they were born into. It’s amazing you know none of this, considering you are attached to the Kurokami Family after all…”  
  
“Huh? What about my family?”

Before she could answer, Takumi suddenly reached his hands forward towards Sonia. “I’m really socially awkward. I can’t stand having others look at me. I don’t have the social skills to deal with this situation… but most of all you have a fatal lack of what’s important.”  
  
“Eh?”

His hands, slowly reached towards her neck. “The love for murder. There’s no love at all in someone like you.”  
  
Because she had only been loved as a princess.  
Never as a person.  
The occult. Her fellow classmates. Serial killers.  
They were all just toys to her.  
That was why she could always smile at them, because she was having so much fun.  
When she played with them she could forget who she was.  
  
Before he could wrap his hands around her neck, Gundham appeared suddenly grabbing him by the sleeve of his shirt and jerking him back. For once he did not say anything, his eyes were as furious as a beast.  
  
“I wasn’t going to kill her.” Takumi looked back at Gundham. “Ow, ow, ow, you’re squeezing my arm way too hard. Don’t you know I hate violence? I just like taking naps in dark places… I don’t kill virgins anyway.”  
  
“W-what? You fiend!” Gundham’s face suddenly turned so red he looked like he had a fever.  
  
“I mean she hasn’t ever killed anybody, so what’s the point. I hate inexperienced killing virgins. That girl too.” Takumi pointed at Medaka. “But you, you have killed someone. I can see it in your eyes.”  
  
“Hah. You see the souls of the damned haunting me, every single one of them I slaughtered to survive!”  
  
“You talk weird.” Takumi suddenly jumped back, immediately getting Gundham to let go of his arm. He picked up a black stray cat that had been following them around. Immediately in his hands, the cats mouth began to foam and it looked feral.  
  
Gundham had killed every single victim with his trained animals.  
Takumi was a copycat killer who stole the killing techniques of others.  
He was an even worse serial killer fanboy than Sonia.  
  
“Hmmm, you kill using the animals you love so much. There’s a lot of passion in that, I’ll give it 86 out of 100.”  
  
“Kurokami can you fight him?”  
  
“I can’t fight those with murderous abnormalities, otherwise I would just learn how to be the perfect murderer.”

 

“Hmph, I see. Then take the black queen and run. From now on I appoint you as her envoy. You shall be her black knight in my place.”  
  
Sonia reached out her hand to the image of Gundham’s back. She could not even grasp him, or reach him, no matter how many times she had tried. “Gundham, no! Come with us!”

"Sonia... An act as unrefined as stopping a man from going to his death...does not befit a noble such as yourself."  
  
He ran his fingers across the snake which wrapped itself around his neck. Immediately, the snake awoke from his nap, hissing as its tongue tasted the air.  
  
Gundham only smiled. He knew someone like Sonia could live on without him. If he died and gave his life protecting her, would that mean his life was worth something? Sonia claimed everyone had a destiny, a reason to be born. Gundham wondered, if he could not live by her side, if he could not live for her, then maybe the reason he was born was to die for her.  
  
He struck a pose and let four hamsters dangle from his arm. They immediately jumped from him and scattered across the ground. They started to climb up Takumi’s legs biting him all over. The cat obeyed him without question, swiping away one of the hamsters.  
  
Takumi picked up another one and held it in his hands. The hamsters eyes started to glow red. He threw it back at Tanaka. The moment it landed, its font teeth dug into his skin. “I see! You can charm the familiars of others! A soulless man, like a vampire.”

 

“I’ve never been called something so cool. Probably because I was unpopular in the past…”  
  
Gundham realizing he could not fight with his animals, suddenly rushed forward and kicked wildly without restraint. Takumi’s thin, wiry body dodged him easily. He seemed to be more shadow then person. Touching him was about as easy as catching a shadow in your hand.

  
All he could do was fight for survival. He wildly clawed at the air with his bandaged hands. Even without his talent, he had already killed after all. He knew what it meant to fight to live. No matter how desperate he became, Takumi just kept dodging.  
  
Gundham could see the tired and vacant expression never left his face. It was as if the whole fight was just boring to him. The cat on his shoulder jumped forward and bite Gundham hard in his arm, sinking his two front fangs into his flesh.

 

Gundham howled in pain, and in his hesitation Tanaka found his opening and closed the distance between them. Gundham saw a pair of scissors held right at his neck.  
  
“We have to run, I mean jog away from here…” Medaka said, grabbing Sonia by the arm and holding her back.

“Wait. If we leave now. Then I’m never going to be able to get Kirakira-chan’s autograph!” Sonia said, with tears in her eyes.

  
Takumi removed the scissors from Gundham’s neck. “This is… too much attention. I can’t do this.” He muttered. As quickly as he had arrived, he ran away. He was probably in search of some dark place he could hide himself away in and ignore the world.  
  
Gundham collapsed to the ground, out of breath.  
  
“Wait, come back here! I am your biggest fan!”  
  
Sonia had successfully scared away the serial killer who terrified other serial killers.

“You’re… you’re weird. You’re a weird girl,” Medaka said letting go of her hand.  
  
“As a fellow princess, you should be one to talk.” She crossed her arms in a dignified manner. “I want to follow him. Wait, if I follow him and he still does not accept my feelings does that make me a stalker? Well, one sided feelings can be beautiful too.”  
  
“St-stalking a serial killer. Is that normal?” Medaka asked.  
  
Gundham looked up at her with his mismatched black and red eyes. “Do any of us look like we even know what normal is?”


	9. Pyscho Killer

_“Murder makes a man…”_ _  
_ _A great man once said that.  
__I think he said it, anyway.  
__Even if he didn’t, I’m sure someone else said something similar._

 

🦔

“When a person dies… I believe it is inevitable that something ‘bad’ be at play, and that an existence akin to evil be involved.”  
  
“For example, assume we have a psycho killer. Being the psycho killer he is, he kills people according to his raison d’être. Naturally, all the people he kills will die. It goes without saying that the psycho killer is the ‘evil’ in this situation; after all, if it weren’t for him, none of those people would have died.”  
  
“Do you understand what I’m trying to say? In other words, ‘human death’ through and through, when you get to the core of it, is a concept intrinsically linked to ‘evil’, and there isn’t even a single centimeter of room for things like good will or conscience to come into play. In a story where people die, not one character who isn’t an evil scoundrel will make an appearance, and that’s the way it should be. Saints who preach justice and do-gooders who preach morality, as well as those something-or-others that solve mysteries- none of them are qualified to have their names listed in the cast of characters, and I’m sure they themselves wouldn’t wish to be listed either. That’s how it is. To express love or emotion or truth through a person’s death is impossible. All there is when a person dies is ‘evil’.”

“Only ‘evil’. Nothing else.”  
  
“Anyway, there are two types of killers. There are those who kill with a reason. There are those who have no reason to kill, so they’ll kill you.”  
  
“That’s the difference between a killer, and a psycho killer. One who can think of nothing but killing when meeting others. One who can kill without thinking anything at all of it. One who possesses a talent for killing. That’s what I call a true psycho.”

“Meow.”  
  
Munakata Kei watched the cat walk away from him in the alleyway he had been hiding in. Disappointment spread across his always serious, and dour face. He called after the cat. “Hey, don’t ignore me, I was talking to you. Zenkichi isn't here and I’m not good at talking to other people besides him.”  
  
The black cat ignored him and continued to trot away on its stubby little legs.

🦔

 

“I just want to learn to see the world the way you do! I am full of compassion and empathy for my fellow human beings, even repulsive killers like you!”  
  
“I have social anxiety!” Hijirihara shouted as he fled from Sonia.  
  
The terrifying serial killer was now fleeing like a victim in a horror movie from the slasher.

Lagging far behind was Medaka, who could only lightly jog at the fastest. “Senpai, maybe you should leave him alone. He’s not just a serial killer from a manga. He’s a person. Who has anxiety.”  
  
The farthest behind was Gundham who always lagged behind at the tail end of the group because he made it his habit to avoid others. He stopped suddenly, crossing his arms and looking away. “Hmph.”  
  
“Stop posing and saying ‘hmph’ for the cameras every five minutes. There aren’t even any cameras!” Medaka made what could only be described as an exasperated Hinata face. “How am I the least eccentric person here?”

Serial killers.  
Murderers who committed inhuman acts.  
They were just humans too, in the end.

Sonia saw them as nothing more than another part of the ‘outside world’. The world she was never allowed to be a part of. Her entire world consisted of her small country, and the rest of the world did not exist outside of it. That was why for her fiction held the same weight as reality.  
  
She was the definition of a cloistered princess. When she was younger, her parents would lock her in her room and leave for diplomatic trips. When they returned, they gave her the books of foreign nations to read to encourage her to read languages. She was captivated by the ‘outside world’ filled with beautiful people she would never get to meet, and beautiful feelings she would never get to experience herself.

Even when her life was threatened, she felt nothing at all for her own life. Rather, she was not allowed to feel, she could not cry out, or be scared. She always wore a proper face for the sake of others. Her emotions, her life itself, it always belonged to her people from the start.  
  
That was why she became obsessed with fiction about societal deviants. She liked bloody and tragic stories where the emotions were most raw. She loved to read about human beings, falling apart, being undone, by their own emotions. She loved those who could not help but feel. She was compelled by selfish characters who stole from others in order to live.  
  
She was a princess living in a castle, and yet her life was so dull.  
Glass slippers sparkle and shine because they are fragile.  
It’s exactly when you’re about to kill or be killed, that human life shines the brightest.  
She just wanted a little shine in her dull world.  
  
Yet to her Takumi was just an exciting outsider. A deviant. Someone living a life completely different than her own. Someone living a life she would never be allowed to live. But he was not, a person.  
  
That was why it never occurred to her, that Takumi could be afraid of ‘human beings.’  
  
When he finally found a convenience store, broke through the glass and then opened up the freezer where they kept the ice cream. He crammed himself into the small space, and then unwrapped an ice cream bar and took one large bite of it. He already had the looks of a neet, with his sleepy eyes and perpetually bored expression, he might as well have the dietary habits of one as well.  
  
When Medaka and Gundham finally caught up, Sonia was still searching around for where Takumi might have gone.  
  
“I see. Our enemy is one with the shadows, master of illusion. It will take a level thirteen spell breaker to dispel this enchantment.”  
  
“No, I think we just scared him and he’s hiding.” Medaka felt having to be the normal person of the group really was exhausting. Normal people were so impressive! Was this what Zenkichi was always going through with her? “Senpai, I don’t get it. Do you like murder?”  
  
“Oh, did I say something strange?” Sonia put her hand to her lips, surprised.  
  
“No... “ Medaka was too nice to say she had said nothing but strange things so far. “It’s just… aren’t you worried about your life?”  
  
“Of course, being killed is the worst thing that can happen to a person. It’s a dead end. Once they die they have no chances left. People should continue to live on as long as they can stay alive. No matter what fate they carry, no matter what sins they have committed, people that are alive are people that should live. Especially when they have a responsibility they must carry out. I do not intend to kill anyone… and I do not intend to be killed either!”  
  
“Whoa. That was quite the speech.” Kurokami Medaka was trying to wrap her head around human beings and their various contradictions. “You hate it when people die, but you like serial killers?”

“Well, don’t you think serial killers are the real victims? They can’t be like everybody else. Maybe they were thrown away by their parents. They didn’t have anyone to guide them. They were betrayed by their closest friend. They were trying to live the same as everybody else, they just fell off somewhere along the line! They probably desperately want in their hearts to live normally, and that’s why they’re all so pitiable.”  
  
She wished she would fall from the tower.  
She wished the perfect princess would break apart into pieces.  
But she had already been broken, and nothing good came from it.  
  
Medaka held onto her head. Making speeches about righteousness on a dime. Talking down to everyone she meets. Trying to sympathize with every single human being without question and assume they were just misguided without understanding them at all. Yes, there was no mistake in who she was looking at, it was the past Kurokami Medaka. _  
_ _  
_ _Oh my god, was I this annoying to other people? All the time? No wonder Kumagawa and Junko tried to kill me. Zenkichi, is something wrong with you? How could you ever have fallen for a girl like that?_ For the first time in her life, Kurokami Medaka experienced intense self loathing and self awareness. That too was just human behavior, it was a natural part of adolescence. Medaka had skipped over much of her adolescence so now she was feeling it all at once.  
  
The overwhelming aspect. The air of an all powerful monarch. Someone to be loved, resented, admired, envied, worshipped, someone who no small emotions could describe. Kurokami Medaka was so wrapped up in herself she let down her guard for a moment.  
  
A bear’s claws suddenly slashed at her back. Medaka turned around and saw that they had been ambushed. The convenience store they were standing by, was now surrounded by a pack of those annoying black and white bear mascots that Junko controlled. Before the bear could attack again, Medaka simply closed her hands around its paw crushing it and lifting it into the air with tremendous strength. She threw it right into the convenience store watching it explode.  
  
“Thank you, I really wanted someone to take these emotions out on.” She saw herself, her reflection appear in the clear glass window reflecting back in the convenience store. She punched straight through it breaking the last window, and stepped through as shattered glass fell around her.

Due to the explosion, the freezer Takumi had been hiding in was thrown into the air and fell over on its side. Takumi spilled out once more.  
  
“KiraKira.”  
  
“I should have never prayed to god to become popular. I can’t handle this many girl’s talking to me in one day.”  
  
“Senpai isn’t a bad person. She just has a lot of love for others…”  
  
“Love? Don’t make me laugh. I hate those who love others for pathetic reasons like ‘I want to be liked…’. They’re no better than submissive stalkers for the entire human race.”  
  
Despite his constant avoidance, and extreme lack of social skills Takumi had this odd habit of always getting down to the heart of the matter. Perhaps he saw through people too easily, and that was why he was repulsed by them.  
  
“I think I spilled ice cream on my shirt. Please don’t look at me. I don’t want you to have a low opinion of me, or think I’m a slob…” Takumi continued to ramble no paying attention to see if Medaka was listening to the conversation or not. He looked up and saw Medaka punch another one of those bears sending it flying. His sleepy cat eyes merely followed her sluggish movements. “You know, you might be strong but you won’t get anywhere fighting that slow against this many enemies. Especially since a lot of the strength behind your punches came with the speed you used to rely on in the past. It’s not like you were mutated by gamma rays, you haven’t even been modified like the Kamukura project. Those are just normal human muscles, trained to their peak, you’re not superhuman or anything just really talented,  you’re probably as strong as Oogami Sakura.”  
  
Medaka did not possess the artificial superhuman muscles of Kamukura. She did not have any super powers either, she only possessed an abnormally fast learning speed. Even then she was not Enoshima Junko so she could not predict the punches other people would throw before they threw them. Fighting all by herself without speed, she could hit hard but she could not dodge, especially when she was completely surrounded.  
  
“If you understand that, then just help!” Medaka shouted at Takumi.  
  
Takumi, still lying on the floor glanced up at her looking already half asleep and bored out of his mind. “Hmmm? There’s no way I could kill those things. It wouldn’t count as a proper ‘passionate killing’. It would just be like breaking a toaster. Somebody probably put a lot of work into building that machine, I’m not some rude child who breaks other people’s toys…”  
  
“Really, it seems to me like you’re just too lazy to fight!”

“I’m not lying on the floor because I’m lazy. I’m just having an existential dilemma on what the point of living is…why do we all waste so much energy standing up all the time? Snakes who crawl around on their bellies have life figured out.” Takumi rolled over on his side, and scratched at his belly. He looked as peaceful as a cat taking a nap in the afternoon sun.  
  
Medaka turned her head and saw Gundham shielding Sonia with his body. His hamsters had run inside one of the Monokuma’s and chewed up its circuitry, but that was not enough to cover the many they were surrounded by.  
  
Even Medaka who was fighting with her fists, quickly noticed how bruised her hands were becoming from punching through metal. Her uniform was being torn up every time she was hit. She would never be a normal cute girl at this rate.  
  
Just then a thrown sword impaled itself in one of the Monokuma’s eyeballs. Medaka looked on in shock. Who would ever do something as throwing a whole sword? This was not an anime, that was the most impractical way to use the weapon. For a second she thought it might have been Gundham, with his obsession with style over substance.  
  
Just then a boy appeared, jumping on the monokuma to pull the sword out and place it back in its sheath. “It seems killing puppets doesn’t count as killing, so I’ll kill you.”  
  
He was a boy with a serious look about him, and a disgusting look in his eyes. His spiky hair was tied back in a pony tail making him look like a swordsman from another era. Even though he had transfered to Hope’s Peak a year ago, he was still wearing the uniform of Sandbox High School.  
  
Sonia squealed in delight, ignoring the situation she was in. “I know who that is! Codename: Last Carpet. The “Serial Killer That Does not Kill”, Munakata Kei!”  
  
“Please don’t refer to me with such embarrassing names. It’s not like I’m trying to look cool.” Munakata said, pinching his pointed eyebrows together. Though, it definitely did look like he was trying to pose a moment ago. He unbutonned his shirt pulling it apart and revealing the weapons he kept hidden underneath his clothing. He threw Medaka a sword, and Sonia a pistol.  
  
Unlike Gundham who was only trained to kill with animals, Sonia was trained with all sorts of weaponry. She was the princess of an absolute monarchy after all whose life had been threatened over and over again since she was young.  
  
“A sword, huh? Don’t you think it’s a cliche for main characters to wield swords!” Medaka said, as she sliced through one of the monokumas. Munakata appeared in her shadow. As he threw weapons away, his speed increased to make up for her complete lack of speed.  
  


🦔  
  


After the random encounters forces were wiped out, Medaka and Kei tood amongst the mechanical skeletons of the bears, now stripped of their fur, with entire halves melting away due to their habit of exploding when destroyed.  
  
Kei buttoned up his shirt. He thought it was too embarrassing and shameful to keep going on with his chest exposed when he was in front of other men his own age. For some reason he did not think at all that the girls present might see him too.  
  
Takumi was still lying on the floor. While everyone else was fighting, he had made some cup ramen noodles in the convenience store’s microwave. Unlike Munakata he was not at all ashamed of the fact that he was alive, or the way he lived.

Sonia grabbed onto Gundham’s shoulders and was shaking him with excitement. “Don’t you see? It’s the killer who only kills killers, and the serial killer who does not kill. It’s like a meeting between polar opposites. It’s an unstoppable force and an immovable object. It’s like twos sides of a contradiction fighting each other, and themselves.”  
  
She was quite excited, and Gundham was quite shaken. “Just don’t forget, that the one with the blackest heart here is me. They would have to kill one hundred times more until they had sunk to the levels of depravity I have. I’m the only one who has thrown away his own humanity.”

Medaka side eyed both of them for a moment, wondering what it was going to take to drag the delusional duo back to reality.  
  
“Munakata! The other one! The one that’s not trying to kill me! Finally, someone familiar. You have to help me search for Shiranui-”  
  
“Where is Zenkichi?” He asked suddenly, interrupting her. “He’s always by your side, if he’s not there then it’s troubling…”  
  
“I don’t know where he is. We got separated…”  
  
“Then, I’ve lost interest in this conversation.” Munakata immediately turned around and started to walk away.  
  
“Wait, wait, stop!” Medaka was not used to people not going along with her whims, and following her. In that way, she was like Enoshima Junko. One of them manipulated, the other inspired. “Shiranui is Zenkichi’s best friend. He’ll be sad if she dies. We both want Zenkichi to be happy right, doesn’t that mean we can be friends?”  
  
“Zenkichi’s happiness?” Hearing those words, repeating them with disgust, Kei sneered. “You’ve never once thought about Zenkichi’s happiness, you just took for granted the fact that he was always by your side trying so hard to make you happy.”  
  
“That’s not true… I really wanted, a normal happiness with him.”

“How could that be normal? He’s completely obsessed with you, and you just let him be that way. Because, that way he would never leave you alone.” Kei nervously began to twist his hands on the sheathed sword he was holding between them, as if he was afraid he would draw it. If murderers to him were an addiction that he had recently quit, he was fearful of falling off the wagon. “You know what that reminds me of, the way that boy Yasuke was always working so hard to earn his place next to the demon Junko’s side. But, if you have to earn it you never belonged there in the first place.”  
  
Munakata continued to play with the katana in his hands. He looked like someone who was ghosting the trigger of a revolver with their finger, holding it on the edge but unable to commit to pulling the trigger. “Hitoyoshi-kun, said we were already friends. I didn’t have to do anything to earn his friendship. Those words saved me.”  
  
Medaka was speechless.  
The person who stood up for her, was the most unlikely person to.  
An oddity among oddities.  
Takumi stood up finally, handing his cup ramen to Medaka. “Can you throw this away for me please?”  
  
Then he turned his attention to Kei. “Hey, hey, hey, this is supposed to be a game about killing. Why do you idiots keep polluting it with your romantic drama?”  
  
Munakata recognized Takumi right away. The two of them had fought before after all, a long time ago at the high school killing trip, that was supposed to be just a normal hot spring’s vacation.  
  
He finally drew out his sword and swung forward fast enough it looked like his intent was to cut the air itself. His blade stopped just a hair’s breadth from Takumi’s neck. “Takumi-kun, have you decided to kill again? As your Senpai I have to say I’m disappointed in you.”

 **Name: Munakata Kei** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Murderous Fiend** **  
** **Likes: Hitoyoshi Zenkichi,** **  
** **Dislikes: Murder** **  
** **Mentality: Abnormal**  
  
Takumi’s expression did not change. Half of it was still covered by his messy hair. “You’re the disappointing one senpai. After all, you possessed the most passion for killing out of all of us and then you decided to kill someone for a stupid reason like ‘for the sake of my friends’. Now you’ve gotten all rotten.”

As he said that, Takumi quickly drew a knife from his sleeve in exactly the same way that Munakata used his hidden weapons. He placed the edge of the knife to Munakata’s neck like he was a mirror image.  
  
**Name: Hijirihara Takumi** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Copycat Killer** **  
** **Likes: Murder** **  
** **Dislikes: Passionless killings** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **  
** “You liked the old me better?”  
  
“The old you was pure. You were more passionate about killing than anybody else. The moment you looked at someone you thought about how to kill them. You used to be a really cool senpai.”  
  
“You think people shouldn’t need a reason to kill?”  
  
“Yes, all that’s required for murder is the passion to swing the knife. All that’s needed for people to die, is a sharp edge and bloodshed. Doing things for the sake of others is just a delusion.”  
  
Kei suddenly dropped his blade from Takumi’s neck. He sheathed his sword again, and stood there with his hand on his hip, holding his sword in the other, like he was lecturing an underclassmen in a totally normal conversation. “Hey, you’re hurting me, making me sound like one of those psycho killers who kills for no reason. It’s because I had a reason that I wanted to kill. Because I’m busy, so I’ll kill you. I don’t have time to deal with you. So I’ll kill you. Because I hate fighting, so I’ll kill you. And for no reason whatsoever, I’ll kill you.”  
  
A one way road.  
Every single turn, just leads to the same end result.  
It all leads to killing.  
His old existence was a dead end existence. That was why he was so glad he met Hitoyoshi, that was why he began to change.  
  
“Besides, you’re not pure either. The simple truth is, if you had never met Ikusaba Mukuro, you would have never become a killer. You weren’t born, you were made this way. You’re just a little kid, unaware of his own trauma.”  
  
“Shut up…”

“You always judge other killers inferior, but what about you? If you kill just for the passion of killing then why do you follow so many strange rules?  Have you killed one single person? On your own? Not as revenge towards another serial killer, but just because you wanted to kill them? No, you haven’t, because that would just be considered ‘murder’ wouldn’t it?”

“I love murder!”  
  
“Do you really? I think you’re just recreating the circumstances of your own trauma. You want to become the ‘killer’ rather than the ‘victim of murder’. You just want to be strong now because you were weak in the past.”  
  
“Shut up, I said shut up!” Takumi Hijirihara saw through others, but he was lacking in self awareness. Usually he was the one talking to others with a disgusted expression on his face. He wanted to be alone in his weird little world, among his obsessions, he did not want to be judged.  
  
“They must be speaking the language of the infernal…” Gundham whispered to Sonia.  
  
“I don’t understand what they’re saying either… Do I really have to learn to understand these kind of people too?” Medaka complained in the middle of both of them.  
  
“The difference between those two is like night and day. Munakata’s a natural born killer. He cannot make an acquaintances, best friends, lovers, no rivals, no teachers, not even somebody who understands. There are people like that were born into this world, with an exceptional talent for killing. They’re killing devils, or psycho killers. Whereas Takumi is a killer who was created out of trauma. He was made this way by circumstance.”  
  
Even when Sonia explained it, it sounded like nonsense.  
Whether killing was meaningful, or meaningless it was all nonsense.  
  
_I like you, so I want to hold your hand._ _  
_ _I like you, so I want to you tight._ _  
_ _I like you, so I want to kiss you._  
  
Those were normal thoughts, normal feelings. Takumi due to his trauma, his mind had twisted those normal human desires for connection in his head around, so it followed that _I like you, so I want to kill you._

That was just a childish way of thinking. He was frozen like a child. His heart was frozen in that moment he witnessed the murder of his classmates. Even if his body grew into an adults, even if he got taller, he was still a child hiding in that locker. He was obsessed with that one moment, trying to make sense of it, trying to control it.

That was how, he became someone who only thought about killing.  
  
“Stop whining like a child because you’re hearing something unpleasant. Don’t you want to grow up already?” Munakata asked him.  
  
That was right, Munakata was someone who blended every emotion, and harmonized every action to lead toward killing. He killed for reason. He killed without any good reason. Yet, a person like that had changed and grown up.  
  
There was another person like that too.  
She was able to change.

 

🦔

 

This isn’t really about killers you see.  
Not the real people motivated to kill. Rather about the ‘idea’ of killers itself. The aesthetics of killers. The kind of killers that could only appear in fiction. The ones that Sonia Nevermind was a fan of.  
  
If Takumi saw himself as a killer he did not have to see himself as a human being, and Munakata as well because he thought he was a natural born killer did not know how to be human.  
  
Neither of them were particularly psychological, but they were obsessed with the idea, the image of killers.

  
I’m sure you’ve imagined it at least once. What it must be like, to live the life of somebody who can only kill.  
  
For Takumi, there was someone he could not see as a killer anymore. They had definitely become a human being in his eyes. No matter where he was hiding in the school, Ikusaba Mukuro found him every day. He had no parents, and no money, so she made him boxed lunches to eat.  
  
He found it really annoying. True, he had stalked that girl in the past but now she was stalking him. Was this a case of stalking revenge? He saw through other people generally, he saw their ugly and impure motives, but that did not mean he understood them as fully rounded people. That was why he had no idea why she insisted on annoying him every single day.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro was a killer.  
For her sister, she killed.  
It was a dead end existence, because her sister would never acknowledge her.  
Her reason to murder was itself, fatal.

Takumi found that beautiful.  
She was like a butterfly, pinned to the inside of glass with its wings spread out.  
That kind of beauty that only gets associated with death.  
It was her tragic existence that made her all the more compelling.  
  
Yet she had lost that beauty recently. She had decided to live after all. Even though she wanted nothing to do with death anymore, she kept bothering him a murderer. She made no sense at all.  
  
“Takumi-kun, make sure to shower every day.”  
  
“Takumi-kun, I know you like cramped spaces but you need to get more sunlight it’s unhealthy.”  
  
“Takumi-kun, you can’t just survive on convenience store food. You’ll turn into a Neet!”

She kept pestering him with those complaints every single day. Takumi thought it was because her beloved younger brother Kumagawa was in a coma, that she just found a replacement to fuss over.  
  
She cleaned his room for him, once a week she stole his dirty laundry off his floor and returned with a clean hamper. She was starting to remind him, of those normal, and boring adults that he had called parents.  
  
After his middle school class was slaughtered by that girl.  
He returned home in quite a haze.  
Before he knew it, those normal parents who had never caused any trouble were dead on the floor in front of him. Whoever had killed them had made a serious mess of their organs.  
  
What a sloppy way of killing someone, was all he thought.  
A real, professional killer would have never made such a terrible mess.  
  
One day, he gave into Ikusaba Mukuro’s pestering and agreed to eat with her in the classroom. While he was trying to pick up his rice with chopsticks, Mukuro suddenly asked him.

“Takumi-kun, when all of your classmates were killed how did you feel?”  
  
“Huh?” He said, tilting his head. His face looked blank, as if he hadn’t been thinking of anything in particular. “Nothin…”  
  
He felt nothing at all about his classmates dying.  
After all, if he had become obsessed with revenge for their sake.  
He obviously would not be sitting down to eat a meal with their killer.  
  
Nothing.  
It was worth nothing.  
And therefore, it cost nothing.  
  
He was just like any other middle schooler. He hated violence, because he disliked pain. He hated criminals, because he did not want to be scolded. The only friend he ever had in his whole life, he had no idea why he even liked him.  
  
He was a boring existence. He did not know why he was alive.  
Then suddenly, Ikusaba Mukuro cut through his school. She cut through his classmates, and painted the halls red with their blood.  
  
He thought he cared about those classmates, but he did not feel sad at all watching them die. He probably only felt ‘the obligation’ to care about them. Just like he felt ‘the obligation’ to pretend to be a normal human that everybody else did.  
  
He did not truly feel alive, until he had felt afraid that he was going to die for the first time.

 _People are dying…_ _  
_ _Crushed…_ _  
_ _Torn apart…_ _  
_ _Smashed…_ _  
_ _They’ll die, and die, and die!_ _  
_ _This is…_ _  
_ _A first time feeling...  
_  
He did not know what it was like to be alive, until he saw someone die in front of him. Perhaps, he was just searching for that feeling again. He thought if he moved himself closer to the source, killers, that he would be able to feel the same way everybody else did.  
  
He was just like everybody else on the outside, but his insides felt so different. He wondered what he was lackin that others had,  that allowed his classmates to laugh on carefree days, and scream in terror when they were getting killed.  
  
“Ever since then it’s like I’m on a rail…” Takumi muttered.  
  
“A rail? What are you talking about?”  
  
“It’s a metaphor. You hear it a lot. People talk about life on a trak, right? You go through middle school, you go through high school, you go through college, you enter society, you support yourself with a salary so that you can bag a lover, and then you depart from the world. That’s the track of life. Well, similarly to that, I’ve been on the murderer’s track ever since I met you.”

“...”  
  
“I’ve probably taken the track too far. I’ve made it too far down without getting killed so far, and now there’s no stopping me. I can’t even entertain the idea of putting on the breaks. It’s like a curse from the past. And in my case, it’s slowly killing me.”  
  
It was like his mind was reformatted ever since meeting her.  
It was like he had a different pair of eyeballs placed in his eye sockets.  
He did not know how to describe it, he just saw the world differently.  
The Takumi from before his trauma, may as well have been a different person.  
How did he get from point A to point B? He no longer understood it.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro’s usually blank face, was choking back tears. Takumi had no idea what he had said to make her so upset.   
  
"No you're wrong it's not like that, you're not on a rail."   
  
"I am on a rail. I chose to become a killer."  
  
Because being on a rail was better than falling off.   
It was better than suffering a fatal blow.  
It was better than being completely lost like Mukuro was.   
  
"No, you're not. No you didn't."   
  
"I'm a killer. You just don't want to face reality because you feel responsible." Takumi stood up suddenly, and flicked a knife he had been carrying concealed in his sleeve. He started to walk away. "You're a killer too. Trying to be anything other than a killer is just stupid. We're both already past the point of no return. Why don't I kill that sister of yours and remind you who you really are."   
  
As he said this, a light went on in Mukuro's eyes like a switch had been flipped. He was able to perfectly copy the movements of any killer, but Mukuro in that moment far surpassed him. It was not like she was a human being, it was like she was a perfect storm, a force of nature, the concept of killing itself. She stood up on the desks and then jumped over to land in front of him. He saw it all playing out like a film in slow motion, projected by an old black and white projector in front of him, that he could not interfere in. She grabbed the knife from his hand, and turned it around in her own. In one smooth strike she slit open his stomach.   
  
The next moment that Mukuro regained herself, she looked in horror at what she had done.    
  
“No, you’re wrong. You didn't choose this. It’s my fault that you’re like this…” Mukuro suddenly threw her arms around him. “Don’t talk about yourself like you’re a murderer, or someone who only knows how to kill Takumi-kun. You’re not a murderer at all. You’re my victim.”  
  
It was so annoying.  
She was just trying to make up for killing his class in the past.  
She just saw him as the victim of a crime. She was just pitying him.  
He loved the Mukuro who killed.  
He loved a killer.    
So, why she was suddenly acting like a human being?  
  
KIllers were untouchable.  
They were so powerful. They would never hide away in a locker while their class was killed.  
Why would they choose to become something as weak as a human?  
  
And yet…  
WIth her arms around him like this.  
As he felt her tears roll down her face and onto him where their faces touched.  
As he listened to her tearful apology.  
  
He felt warm.  
He felt a warmth in his stomach he had never felt before.  
The butterlfies were not killed and pinned down under glass.  
They were flying around in his stomach.   
He reached down and felt the blood falling out of his stomach. 

 _It’s such a pretty feeling._ _  
_ _I see…_ _  
_ _I guess that’s why I never noticed._ _  
_ _Sometimes you can’t see what’s right in front of you._ _  
_ _The thing I was searching for…_ _  
_ _Was in my own guts… This whole time…_ _  
_ _I’ve finally found you._ _  
_ _I had been looking forever and ever._ _  
_ _What the hell?_ _  
_ _If you were inside me…_ _  
_ _You could’ve just told me._

Mukuro slowly stitched the wound in his stomach back together that day, apologizing over and over again.  
He began to wonder if people could be stitched together like this and fixed even if they were broken.   
  
When Takumi was around Ikusaba Mukuro, he started to feel like he could go back to being a human being again somehow. There was some way to be the boy who read manga with Shuji on the rooftops.

🦔

 

Munakata dropped his sword to the floor and let Takumi go. He turned his back on all of them once more, looking like he would rather take his chances alone then with any of them.  
  
Medaka reached out for him, but then she remembered his harsh words about her treatment of Zenkichi and she hesitated. She loved Zenkichi and yet… why could she not defend herself? She could not say a single word to explain her feelings for him back there. Even though she knew she loved him.  
  
Takumi quietly looked at the image of Munakata’s back. Someone strong enough to resist killing, who had learned not to kill.  
  
He made his decision then, and rushed after Munakata.  
Munakata tossed an annoyed glance back in his direction. “Are you a stalker or other killers now?”  
  
“You haven’t killed anyone.”  
  
“I killed Kumagawa-kun.”  
  
“Yeah, but he immediately got up. That doesn’t count.” They continued their oddly casual conversation about murder. Takumi reached out and grabbed onto his sleeve. “Listen, you told me to grow up, but I’m a human being who can’t be relied upon to do any kind of human activities. I hate making eye contact, talking to others, or having to be responsible for myself in any way. So I need someone’s help raising me up.”  
  
“Are you asking me to be your senpai?”

Takumi raised his head causing his messy hair to fall away from his eyes. For the first time he looked forward with two red eyes. “I already have a senpai. She’s stupid, disappointing,  and tries way too hard, but there’s no way you could replace her.”


	10. It's All Just Empty

“Young master you promised you would take responsibility for me.”   
  
“Yeah, so what?”   
  
“Well, it is quite difficult to walk around blind like this.” 

 

Fuyuhiko nervously looked at his own hand. His eyes darted back and forth between that hand, and the expectant Peko. “You mean holding hands? Isn’t that too much of a public display of affection?” 

 

Fuyuhiko cared far too much about what others thought. He was obsessed with the image of a gentleman Yakuza, an old fashioned thing of the past where the Yakuza had to follow their own code of honor. Perhaps part of his mind denied being in the Yakuza by adhering to these rules. Perhaps he was afraid of close contact and used that as an excuse. Perhaps he was just a child.    
  
“It’s the middle of the night. We’re in abandoned city. Besides, those two are doing it.” It was so obvious, that even underneath her blindfold Pekoyama was giving a sidelong glance to Hinata and Yasuke.    
  
Those two boys were having an intelligent conversation as always.   
No, that was a lie. 

  
“Enoshima always does things for the same predictable reasons. She’s only has bad intentions, Komaeda only has good ones.” Hinata said, as far as he was concerned the only one allowed to badmouth Komaeda was him.    
  
Yasuke had this habit of bad mouthing everybody. Absolutely everybody, with no exception. He was a kind and just soul like that. Yasuke narrowed his dark eyes. “Even if Komaeda says his actions are for hope, that doesn’t change the fact that what motivates him is primarily his own despair and fear of dying. He’s doing it all because of despair too, just like Junko.”    
  
Hinata who had been seduced by both Junko and Komaeda in the past and definitely did not want to admit he had a type, let emotion creep into his voice. “Well. He would not be dying if a more competent neurologist had cured him. It’s too bad the one he was stuck with was insufferably dull and mediocre.”    
  
Yasuke saw Hinata immediately try to go for his weak spot. He smiled. Kamukura who had no empathy for others, tried to determine the boundaries of others by testing their limits. In other words he was like a brat seeing what he could get away with. “You really are just a big kid, aren’t you?”    
  
“...” Hinata went silent again, not making a good case in favor of his maturity. 

“What are you two idiots doing?” Fuyuhiko asked them.   
  
“Excuse me, we’re two geniuses who also happen to be idiots.” Yasuke corrected, before looking back one hand on his hip. “We’re arguing who has the worst taste. At least Enoshima is attractive.”   
  
“Komaeda looks…” Hinata began.   
Like a cadaver.    
No, worse than a corpse.   
Some inhuman thing.   
No longer human.   
Hinata changed the subject. “So you only care about looks? Humans are always so predictably shallow. I can’t believe you put me through so many consecutive surgeries just because you wanted to fondle Enoshima’s breasts.”    
  
“Is that how you describe love? Don’t tell me you’re going to grow up to be one of those ‘Love is only a chemical reaction in the brain’ guys.”He wanted to protect her. He wanted to protect the girl who loved him so much she wanted to kill him.    
  
“Grow up…” Yasuke kept mocking him as childish. It was troubling. Though, Hinata supposed it was true he still had not decided whether he wanted to be more Hinata or more Kamukura. “Enoshima’s personality is far more ugly. For someone who worships and is worshipped by despair, she is needy and attention hungry.”    
  
“Hm, I think I’ve figured out why you haven’t gotten bored of Komaeda yet. He must be a blindspot in that supercomputer brain of yours, like a single grain of sand ruining everything.”    
  
“Komaeda doesn’t ruin… well he doesn’t ruin everything.”    
  
“Have you met Komaeda? The Ultimate Needy Bitch?”    
  
“He… nobody lives entirely alone. Even I was nothing, and nobody until I began to interact with others.”    
  
“Don’t try to hide the fact you’re losing the argument by sounding deep! I always hated when Junko did that!”    
  
“Well, you hate your own childhood friend.”   
  
“You’ve known Komaeda for what, like a year and how much do you hate him? Imagine if you had known him all your life.” Yasuke Matsuda’s philosophy of life. “The closer you get to someone the more annoying they get.” 

“Hm…”   
  
“Don’t Hm me, speak more clearly. And what did I say about looking others in the eyes?” Yasuke said, snapping back to lecturing him.    
  
“If I look at a person’s eyes I can figure out everything about them.”   
  
“Really? Because you can’t seem to figure out how to stop pissing me off! Just admit that you’re being a shy brat!”    
  
“What a meaningless argument.” Fuyuhiko said, looking at both of them with genuine sorrow for how fall they had fallen as human beings. They were both disqualified. “Besides, you shouldn’t be arguing over whose worse. Because the best is obviously Peko!” 

 

They were arguing over who was worse because their self esteem was that low.   
Fuyuhiko did not get it, because somehow, despite being a violent yakuza his entire life his self esteem was significantly higher than the both of them. 

  
Peko muttered to herself. “You can say that, but you can’t hold my hand…”    
  
Fuyuhiko stopped for a moment. “Wait, Hinata you and Komaeda are a thing?”    
  
“Human relationships are such a precious thing, but they cannot be defined so easily.” Hinata said, sounding deep again.    
  
Yasuke, cruel tongued as usual, “Careful you’re going to ruin all my shitty work as a neurologist by giving my precious monster a brain aneurysm thinking of that.”    
  
Fuyuhiko noticed it was a delicate situation. After all, he wanted Pekoyama by his side for his entire life and when they got older he planned on marrying her for sure no matter who he had to fight to do it, and yet he was not comfortable calling her his girlfriend. “Ah… I was just wondering, cuz, y’know. I thought Komaeda had a thing for Matsuda.”    
  
Pekoyama also spoke up. “I thought he had a thing for Zenkichi.”    
  
Matsuda chimed in. “I thought he had it bad for Kumagawa. Cuz y’know, he’s a needy bitch.”   
  
Kamukura, prone to possessiveness, not wanting to lose a single member of his beloved class that made him more human to the point he was willing to play them like chess pieces on a board, grabbed the sides of his head and screamed in the air. “Why is my boyfriend such a slut!?”    
  
Yasuke was surprised, but Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama both used to Hinata were not even fazed.    
The meaningless conversation concluded.    
There were no winners, all three of them, Fuyuhiko, Matsuda and Komaeda were all losers.    
  
Kamukura was the first to notice they were being followed. He sharply turned his head, his one red eye catching the pursuer. He wished if they were going to follow him they could do a better job of hiding their presence so he could have more fun trying to find them.    
  
The three of them were walking in the aftermath of their ‘random encounter’. A random encounter which had gifted them with a ‘treasure chest’ for their victory. It said it was genuine DanganRonpa memorabilia, whatever the hell that meant. Inside they found Pekoyama’s bamboo practice sword, and a revolver. Hinata had just broken a lead pipe off a nearby building. When Yasuke complained about not having a weapon, Hinata had looked deeply into his eyes and said  _ I’ll protect you. _   
  
“Come out already, I’m tired of looking at you.”    
  
Kamukura, said in a dull voice.    
  
Out of the alleyway stepped a man of about Fuyuhiko’s height. His head was shaved like a prisoner. He had round eyes like a panda’s. In fact, his pupils were large and completely dark not showing the whites of his eyes at all, more like the eyes of an animal. His pupils were so dark it looked like no light escaped from them, and no light reflected in them either. From his lips there was a cigarette hanging that he was idly chewing on.    
  
“Hey, hey, no need to look at me like that I surrender.”    
  
Fuyuhiko was a little bit jealous, he had given up on smoking when his dad beat the habit out of him. It had been his one act of teenage rebellion. He thought he looked more adult when doing it.    
  
“Hey, look it’s another brat come to have a playdate with Kammy. Aren’t you too young to smoke?” Yasuke immediately taunted.    
  
“Hey! He’s not a baby faced guy at all! He looks manly as hell, he’s probably already an adult.” Fuyuhiko was projecting.    
  
“There’s no way a person that short is fully grown.”    
  
“Listen, he’s tall as hell too! You can’t talk about height, it’s not like your tall. You’re just all leg! Like someone put your legs in a taffy stretcher.”   
  
As Matsuda stood there, still holding his other hand on his hip and cocking it to the side he noticed his thin and willowy frame only reached that high because his legs happened to be longer than his arms. 

  
“This conversation… it’s not cool at all.” Hoshi Ryoma said, taking a drag from his cigarette.   
  
All four members of the impromptu party fell silent. There was no coming back from that. The four of them were a master swordsman, a teen genius brain surgeon, a god of talent, and a young heir to the yakuza and yet there was not one ounce of coolness among them. 

  
Even with their vague goal of ‘reaching someplace high’ to get a better view of the city, they had just been bickering like children the whole time.    
  
Hoshi Ryoma sighed.    
Apathetic.   
Not the kind of apathy that Enoshima Junko felt.   
That kind of ‘bored with everything feeling.’   
It was distinct.

He looked as if he were done, with everything and everyone.    
Not for comedic effect, just, tired of it all.    
  
“Well, if you don’t recognize killer Tennis I suppose that’s for the best. The four of you have a good mood going as a group of friends, I’d hate to kill that too.”   
  
He turned his back as if he was just going to walk away on his own. Done with them, too.    
_ I’m better off on my own. _   
In an instant, anyone could tell he was that kind of character.    
Fuyuhiko and Peko were not good people. They were criminals.   
Yasuke only had room in his heart for a few, and Hinata had to protect his class.   
They might have just let him go if Pekoyama did not recognize that name.    
  
She moved first, chasing the sound of his voice. In a moment a bamboo sword was pointing at the back of his neck. “Killer Tennis. The same man who slaughtered an entire mafia family single handedly?”    
  
“Yeah. Even brats on the street who were just following orders.  Everyone connected to the name of  _ that group. _ I am justice, so there’s not a single drop of kindness in someone like me.”    
  
“You should be on death row.”    
  
Ryoma casually held his wrist in the air. There was a silver bangle there. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m still in chains.”    
  
“What do you feel about criminals?”    
  
  


“What? You want me to talk about my feelings just like that? So uncool.” He sighed playing with the cigarette between his lips. “If somebody kills a criminal, then isn’t it just too bad? They failed at living a normal life. Once they decided to become a villain, all they could do was delay the inevitable until a hero came to defeat them.”    
  
It seemed like a simple black and white morality.    
Black and white like his eyes, empty of any color.    
Someone who saw nothing in the world.    
  
“Of course I include myself in this as well. I’m also someone who has given up living and therefore has no right to live. Really, it’s just inconvenient that someone broke me out of prison I’m going to have to turn myself in once I find my way out of this city and return to death row.”    
  
Ryoma wore striped pants. There was an iron cuff around his leg, with a few chain links still attached to it. He had a look that no matter where he went, he would still be a prisoner. Rather than fight against it he just accepted it. The definition of a laid back attitude, he was just laying back waiting for it all to end.    
  
Pekoyama was faced with a psycho killer on death row. One who seemed to feel nothing at all, not only about his sins, but everything else. Not only that, he was a man who specifically targeted and despised criminals. “You might become a threat one day, for the sake of my master…”   
  
“Peko, stop! A sword doesn’t choose who they kill!” Fuyuhiko hated giving her orders. He hated the fact that it was the only time she ever listened to him. Playing the roles of master and servant seemed so much easier than having to be human beings around each other. Yet, he was desperate.    
  
He had to protect Peko.

Peko had to protect him.    
That was why they were always fighting each other.    
They were each other’s greatest allies.   
They were each other’s greatest enemies.    
  
“It’s a good thing you spoke up. You saved her just by one second, pipsqueak I almost lost my cool and killed her.”    
  
“Who the hell are you calling pipsqueak!? Ya pipsqueak!”    
  
“Good comeback. I know those eyes. You have someone you want to protect right? You have something to fight for right?” He walked past Peko. Peko did not stop him, because she had been ordered as a sword not to cut anybody. Step by step, until he was face to face with Fuyuhiko. “You look so cool. I bet she thinks so too.” 

“The hell do you want?”    
  
Standing face to face.    
A vigilante, who killed.    
A criminal, who killed.    


“You really have a fiery spirit.”   
  
“Stop making fun of me.”   
  
“No, I’m in awe of you. I hope you can see the admiration in my eyes.” When he took a step closer, Fuyuhiko raised the revolver he had been carrying without any hesitation at all. “If I was like you, if I had a person to protect, if there was just one person even I could have a reason to live.”    
  
“Tch!”   
  
“You’re so strong. With a slight press of your finger, you can give me what I desire most. This is what I want, don’t you see? This is all that’s left for me to want…” He pressed his eyeball against the barrel of the gun.    
  
Fuyuhiko had killed.   
Because his parents had ordered him to.   
To avenge his sister.   
For the sake of Enoshima Junko.   
To protect Pekoyama.    
For plenty of bad reasons he had killed, and some of them were good people.    
He had even killed those who begged him to let them live.    
Yet, this person in front of him begging for death unnerved him so much that his hands started to shake. The trigger suddenly felt too slippery for him to grab hold of.    
  
“My only fear is that you’ll spare me. Tell me there’s a reason to go on living. But, you won’t, right? Your blood is Yakuza black. It’s far too late for you to become a kind person. Please, kill me just like you killed everyone else before me.” 

 

🦔

 

Ryoma hated criminals.    
He hated thoughtless fools who figured they owned the whole world. 

Who thought they could do what they want.   
The worst kind of cruelty was not done by flawed people with tragic backstories.    
It was done by people who just did not give a damn.    
Justice and cruelty were the same to him.    
They were both completely lacking in kindness. 

  
He hated criminals. He was, however, not completely lacking in self awareness.    
As a vigilante he was no different than them.   
Crime is punishment.   
Punishment is a crime.   
Naturally, he hated himself too.    
  
Who was Ryoma? Ryoma himself would be just as confused by that question. The way he figured it, he had already lost all traces of himself. The current him, just like a baby had been born screaming one day. That was all he remembered, screaming. He did not even hear the sound of his own screams, or realize he was the one screaming until he noticed how much his throat hurt.    
  
When he looked down he saw the remains of his own family. Their corpses twisted beyond recognition. They were dismembered, stomped out, in the most inhuman way possible until they ceased to be ‘corpses’ and became ‘stains’ on the floor. The mafia gave him a warning painted in his own family’s blood.    
  
Well shit.   
That was a pretty good reason to be screaming so much.    
  
There was not even enough of his family left to bury. He looked at the remains that could only be described as ‘torn apart pieces’. He knew his father, his mother, his younger sister, his younger brother, were all dead and yet he could no longer tell which parts in the mangled pile belonged to who.    
  
They ceased to be human. It was impossible for him to believe the gore in front of him was ever a living human being. In his memories, he began to forget what his family looked like, what they sounded like, the happy times he spent together with them. As he tried to recollect their faces, they all became blurry and indistinct.    
  
Seeing them like this, he ceased to be human as well.   
His mind went numb. He had been screaming and crying and complete agony a moment ago, but it was like his brain had been severed from the rest of his body. He could no longer move and instead he witnessed ‘scenes’ occuring around him like he was in a front row seat at the movies.    
  
A detective quietly consoled him.    
The two of them made plans together to allow him to go into hiding.    
Ryoma said he wanted to keep living because that was what his family wanted of him.   
He did not remember saying those lines though.   
He heard the words spoken in his voice, but he had a hard time believing they left his mouth.    
He told his girlfriend over the phone never to call him again.   
He made a lie that he was only using her for her money.    
He served his last connection so he could disappear and flee the mafia.    
He no longer needed to be Hoshi Ryoma, but even as someone else he still had to live.    
  
Then, one day before he was going to disappear he received a finger with an engagement ring on it in the mail. There was a phone inside the box. When he answered it, the mafioso told him his girlfriend had been killed as well and that her last words were begging him for help.    
  
He worked hard. He got a scholarship for his tennis abilities. He made friends with the members on the team. He had precious memories. He attended school. He was respectful towards his parents. He always took time to play with both younger siblings. He never gave his family trouble. He was planning to go pro and get a job one day. He wanted to marry a nice girl and settle down. He promised in his heart he was always going to be kind to his kids. He was looking forward to being a cool dad.   
  
He was just trying his best to live a normal life,  he thought that he was living the right way. Why the hell was he being punished so much?    
  
He knew the reason why. He refused to take a dive in a tennis match they had fixed. Everybody he knew had to die, because a few people lost their money betting on a tennis match.  
It was not even evil.  
There was no good reason behind it.  
It was just suffering.  
 _It's all just empty._  
  
He asked the detective one final thing, after all of this was over please arrest him.    
The detective tried to stop him. That scene too, played out like a movie in front of him.    


Detective:    
“I know what you’re thinking, but don’t do it. Even if you do it…”    
  
Ryoma:    
“Even if I do it, nothing will be fixed right? My family will be dead still?   
That’s exactly why I have to do it.”    


Ryoma, internal monologue:    
_ If nothing can be fixed then it should all just break.  _ _   
_ _ If it was all pointless to begin with. _ _   
_ _ Let me die pointlessly.  _   
  
Detective:    
“Listen to me. They have numbers and they’re organized.    
Not a single person whose died.    
Would wish for you to die too."

Ryoma:    
“That’s selfish of them, isn’t it?    
I died, but you have to keep living.   
If they can wish for something selfish like that, then so can I.”    
  
Detective:    
“There has to be something more. You’re just going to let it end like this?   
That’s disappointing!”   
  
Ryoma:    
“There’s nothing more. It’s all over for me. All endings are disappointing.”   
  
Detective:    
“Forgive me for putting it this way, but please hear me out.    
You need to find someone.   
It can be anyone.   
Just one person.    
If you can’t live for yourself, then live for them.”    
  
Ryoma:    
Stage Direction:  _ He turns his head to look at the  _ _   
_ _ Detective one last time acknowledging his kindness... _ _   
_ “You’re crying. You were always so sensitive.    
Don’t worry about me.   
I’m not scared anymore.   
I can’t lose anything…” 

That was when ‘the movie’ ended and reality resumed. He walked past the detective out of reach. He was just a professional athlete after all, an innocent going up against criminals. He thought at best he would kill one or two of them and then die by their hands.    
  
After he watched the first one die due to his skull being crushed, Ryoma realized something. Killing was much easier than he thought. It was no wonder all of his loved ones had died so easily. He expected to die at their hands, to be put out like a miserable dog.    
  
Before he knew it he had killed all of them. He thought he lived his life as a good person. He thought he was kind and hard working. He never once thought he would be capable of killing so many. As he looked at his hands in the aftermath of a massacre he heard sirens coming outside.    
  
It was then that he realized that the mafia had won in the end. He thought he had nothing left to lose, that was why he chose to die with revenge in his heart. He had one last thing. Himself. The mafia had not even needed to kill him, he saw himself dead on the floor amongst the other bodies.    
  
He could no longer be a victim.    
He could no longer be innocent.     
He was a murderer now too.   
The police would not treat him any differently than the criminals he killed.    
The mafia took everything from him.   
He threw the last thing away with his own two hands.    
He threw himself away.    
  


_ Why did I want revenge so badly?  _   
_ Oh, I get it.  _ _   
_ _ Revenge is a reason to live. _ _   
_ _ It was just so I could live a bit longer pursuing my revenge.  _ _   
_ _ If I was trying to live for a stupid reason like revenge. _ _   
_ _ I could have just gone on living for any stupid reason.  _   
  
Realizing that he still could have lived even after losing everybody, Ryoma put his hands up in the air. “Hey, hey, no need to look at me like that I surrender.” He could have just gone on living. He did not need to take revenge. He did not need to become a murderer. It all seemed so obvious.    
  
After it was too late to change anything.    
He peacefully surrendered, was convicted and sentenced to death row.    
The mafia killed five people in total.   
His kill count had reached  double digits after he removed everyone from that mafia group.    
  
If his life was a movie it would have the dumbest and most predictable moral at the end. Revenge is empty and meaningless. No shit sherlock. Zero stars. That was the review Ryoma would give it. 

 

🦔

 

Ryoma thought of all of that as the barrel pressed against his eye. Death was the only thing he had left to hope for. Yet, for some reason, whenever he got close to death it brought him no comfort. He was only filled with unpleasant memories.    
  
He saw the look in Fuyuhiko’s eyes.    
He knew the eyes of a killer because he knew what his own eyes looked like.   
Fuyuhiko would not kill him. He understood that implicitly. 

“Are you telling me to live too? So cruel. Yakuza really do have ice in their veins…” After Ryoma went through all the effort of making himself seem like a threat to their existence. Someone who they could not let live. This boy still lacked the nerve to kill him. 

  
“Look, it doesn’t matter if you kill me or not. Somebody delivered a fatal wound to me. It’s terminal. Living is just the act of slowly dying to me. I’m bleeding out all the time, and yet it’s invisible not a single person notices. It’s all over for me, a wound no one can survive and yet I’m still alive.” Ryoma muttered trying to goad him further.    
  
It was strange. He thought he was a kind person, but he was someone capable of killing everyone in that mafia group. This boy was born with pitch black Yakuza blood in his veins dripping out like tar, and yet he could not even kill someone who just threatened the person he had to protect no matter what. 

  
Ryoma felt nothing at all about that. He felt no envy or grief. “Those emotions” were not left inside of him. Effortlessly, he grabbed the gun from Fuyuhiko’s hand and flipped the boy over his shoulder. He did not point the gun at the boy, he simply held it aloft like it was just a toy. “Nevermind, I changed my mind. I don’t want to be killed by a weak person like you.”   
  
“Weak?”   
  
“I thought you were protecting her, but she’s just holding you back isn’t she? Childhood friends are like that. They just want to keep playing their kiddy games forever. When they’re around each other they just stay dumb brats.” He spun the revolver letting all the bullets fall out of the barrel, before he dropped it on the ground and then kicked it back to Fuyuhiko. “Someone like you won’t become strong until you’ve thrown away everything that holds you back.”    
  
Before Ryoma could turn to walk away, he found a black shadow standing in his way. Kamukura stepped in front of him without making a noise. “You think you can just walk away after saying all of that to my friend?” Hinata was speaking again, quick to anger and wanting to defend others.    
  
“You’re so lucky for a weak brat. You have such good friends.”    
  
Fuyuhiko looked up at Hinata, his face not even angry just looking sad. “Just let him go.”    
  
Ryoma Hoshi put both of his hands in his pockets.    
He smiled.   
Or at least, something resembling a smile appeared on his face.    
As he walked away he looked like nothing more than a corpse someone had forgotten to bury.   
A suicide that was waiting to happen.    
A hanged man just drifting there waiting to die.    
“Jeez, I lost composure for a moment there…”   
Muttering that, he covered his face with his hand.    
  


🦔   
  
They finally climbed up ‘somewhere high’.    
  


A school building that was under construction. At its height it provided a good view of the city, but the rooftop was only half built and there were still visible iron beams. Their casual mood from earlier had completely disappeared. Everyone knew Fuyuhiko had been left with a wound and yet none of them knew how to comfort one another.   
  
None of them had been ever comforted.    
For Matsuda it was the worst, because comfort to him was synonymous to manipulation. Kamukura had tried to distract himself thinking. While the four of them were silent, Yasuke paid the least attention to the group.    
  
That was why he was the first to notice. “Get the fuck out of the way!”    
  
Sailing through the sky, a flying desk heading directly for Peko. Fuyuhiko could not take her hand earlier, yet with no hesitation at all he threw his arms around Peko and himself between Peko and the desk. If his only choice was to fall, he would fall with her.    
  
Matsuda turned around to see a dark man, wearing a fur jacket and a tight fitting t shirt. “Principal’s office. Now.”    
  
“I know we probably deserve it, but why exactly are you trying to kill us?” Yasuke asked the man who he did not recognize. 

 

Kamukura stood up completely silent. His black hair trailing behind him. His eyes glowed underneath his hair as if he was peering out from the shadows. Usually his face carried no expression at all, but right now without even realizing it he was smiling.    
  
“Y-you’re… that kid.”    
  
“You remember a worthless little reserve course student like me? I’m so flattered.” Hinata said, as he slowly strode towards the other. His footsteps were heavy. “Sakakura-senpai, I took your advice.”    
  
Juzo was not so insensitive that he would beat this kid down and forget about his face. Two years or so ago before the start of all this, he caught a kid trying to sneak on the main campus to investigate one of the murders. One murder had quickly turned into two. If anybody else got involved it might become three. The school Munakata loved so much, the place where they had first met, was now somewhere where two children could die and nobody gave a damn. 

This kid could die too, all because he wanted to feel special and play detective. Juzo decided right then to scare him away. Seeing the dark side of Hope’s Peak had even changed someone strong like Munakata so much. This kid would be eaten alive and then forgotten.    
  
Apparently, his prediction had come true. He was still recognizably that same reserve course student, and yet it was like he was an entirely different person at the same time. “I’m not that insecure little kid anymore.” When he heard those words, Juzo noticed a terrible pain in his gut. He looked down and saw Hinata had punched him, in the exact same manner.    
  
“Yeah, punching him shows how not insecure you are. I thought I gave you the talents of the Ultimate Psychologist, do you not know what projection is?” Yasuke shouted from across the room.    
  
“Whose side are you on?” Hinata shouted back.    
  
“I thought we already established this. I’m a selfish bastard. Except, I don’t care about myself, only Junko for some stupid reason.”    
  
That stupid reason being he still loved her.   
Love was stupid.    
  
Juzo had taken a punch before. He grit his teeth hard to prevent himself from crying out, and was about to throw a punch back before he hesitated.    
  
“What a predictable command. Let me guess, it says “Cannot throw a punch” on your bracelet?” 

  
Juzo’s only response was to grab the pipe that Kamukura threw aside when he decided to fight with his bare hands. Sakakura knew this was wrong. If he had scared away that kid properly back then, or maybe if he had stopped to tell him seriously about the danger. If he had just spoken from the heart instead of growled and barked like a dog none of this would have ever happened. 

  
All he ever wanted was to be a man. The man at Munakata’s side. Yet, here he was a dog following orders. Even though he knew it was wrong to blame Hinata who was just some kid caught up in this all, he was still going to fight him. He would not let a single person stand in Munakata’s way, that was what he had promised himself.    
  
Even worthless trash meant only to be thrown away.   
Could be worth something to Munakata.    
  
“Looks like your talent is useless.” Hinata sneered. “No, even if you could use your talent it would still be useless.”   
  
Juzo swung the pipe expertly, even if he was a boxer he clearly had experience with street fights, and dirty fighting. He was fast and brutal as always. The kind of person who never held back as a rule.   
  
Hinata was faster. Juzo only swung at the air, and then an uppercut connected to his chin knocking him back. 

 

“H-how the hell?”   
  
“I told you I took your advice. I fit into my slot. A worthless nobody like me was perfect to fit into the slot of the Kamukura project. Don’t you think the higher ups were so kind to throw me this bone? They so graciously let me be used as their experiment.” 

  
Hinata was a victim, but he denied that with every fiber of his being. He had decided after all he would take responsibility for his sins as Kamukura. He never wanted to run away from himself again. Yet, the responsibility he was carrying was too much. He could not let himself get any comfort at all. For the scars that covered his body, for the surgical scar that stretched all the way across his forehead when his skull was cut open. Again. Again. Again.    
  
All of those feelings needed to go somewhere.    
Hinata felt too much.   
Kamukura felt nothing at all.   
Neither of them knew what to do with those feelings.   
  
“Just by watching your old fights it took me less than a week to learn what took you twenty years of constant training. I’ve already seen every punch you’re capable of throwing.”   
  
“It doesn’t matter how much you brag about talent, your dick isn’t going to get any better Kammy.” Yasuke shrugged.    
  
“So, you’re just a copycat, huh? That’s the best Hope’s Peak could do for their Ultimate Science Fair Project?” Juzo said, as he wiped the blood away from his mouth.    
  
“Yeah, he’s almost as smart as a potato battery.” Yasuke kept talking even though this scene had nothing to do with him. It was how he dealt with stress.    
  
“You’re the one whose going to lose to nothing more than a worthless copy who never worked hard once in his life.” Hinata said.   
  
Juzo swung wild with the pipe again, but Hinata had already disappeared. Hinata bent his knees and got low, and as he stood up again he slammed his fist hard into Juzo’s stomach. “Nice try, slugger.”    
  


“Come on, put up your dukes.” This time he did not stop, but rather went for the face while Juzo was still stumbling backwards from the hit. He threw punch after punch to the face. “You think you’re Pete Herman? You’re like Jack Dempsey! Or maybe Jack Johnson! You’ve got no technique!”    
  
He was not even giving Juzo a chance to fight back. It was a one sided beatdown. His movements were too fast even for the Ultimate Boxer to keep up with. “I am the greatest! Come on, don’t you know what I’m talking about? Are you even a Boxer? Did you just want an excuse to hit those weaker than you? Do you really not know? I’ll make you pay for not knowing! Of course! Even! If! You! Did!”    
  
Juzo fell back again and again, the only reason he was still standing up was because of Hinata’s consecutive punches keeping him in the air. Until Hinata grabbed him by the neck instead pinning him to the wall like his body was weightless.    
  
“You’d still be boring.” Hinata said. “What a waste of talent.”    
  
Juzo reached up and grabbed the hand on his neck.   
Oh, he was still conscious. 

  
“You’re good at taking a hit. It’s like you’re used to failure or something…” Hinata got the feeling no matter how many times he was beaten up, Juzo would not break. That just meant Hinata would have to try mentally. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Hey, you want to call out Munakata’s name don’t you? You want him to come save you?”    
  
“N-no… I don’t want him…”   
  
“You want him. You pretend like you don’t. You pretend like your so selfless, doing it all for his sake. Really it’s the opposite, you’re selfish, how many people have to die because of your fucked up little crush on another man?”   
  
Yasuke interrupted again. “Oh, so now you’re going to act exactly like Junko, huh?”   
  
“...” Hinata was silent.    
  
“You should be careful. You’re going to get seven years of bad luck if you keep punching that mirror in front of you.”   
  
“...”   
  
“Just do it already.” Juzo said, looking up. “If it’s for Munakata, even now I don’t mind dying…”   
  
  


“Don’t act so fucking noble.” Hinata said. “You’d rather die than be honest about your feelings. What a wimp.” 

 

“Yep, there’s nobody here willing to die for the sake of their fucked up dysfunctional relationship…That’s definitely not a thing we all have in common.” Yasuke warned again.    
  
Kamukura dropped him on the ground. Coldly he raised one foot in the air. If only he had crushed Junko like this, broken her head like an egg underneath his feet he would be free from all of this. Whose fault was this? Why was he hurting so much right now? Why did he feel this way? Whose emotions were these?    
  
Before he could bring his foot down suddenly someone was standing over Juzo. Yasuke had stepped in the way. “I’m more at fault than Sakakura is for making you. You can’t kill him and let me live without looking like the biggest most hypocritical tool on earth.”    
  
“You’re my…”   
  
“I’m not your friend. You’re my monster.” Yasuke repeated again. “I’m only following you around to use you.”   
  
Hinata knew, Yasuke was only saying that to save Juzo’s life. Hinata knew, but all he felt was jealousy. After all, as broken, as self-hating as Yasuke was, even looking like someone who had lost everything he still wanted to protect others.    
  
It reminded him of Kumagawa.    
Hinata could not choose.    
Kamukura or Hinata.   
Black or White.    
He just did not know anymore.    
He was beginning to lose the ability to tell the difference.    
  
As he did nothing but wait, a silver streak appeared suddenly slicing at the air between him and Sakakura. Hinata jumped back immediately. He saw the white knight appear. His smile, as always, as cutting as a blade.    
  
“Good job, Sakakura.”    
  
“Munakata…” Juzo lived to hear those words. His entire existence. Everything was worth sacrificing to attain just those few words from the person most special to him. They were the proof of his existence. If he could not get close to the person he desired the most, then all he had to hold onto were those words.    
  
“I never expected you to fight him, you did a good job drawing them out as a sacrifice.”   
  
But when he heard those words, they were strangely empty.    
  



	11. The Sword and the Mop

“A sword cannot choose who it kills.”    
  
Fuyuhiko said those words to her to reign her in. She could understand why, because in the past she had gone too far on her own acting as a sword. She killed the people who took her in and made her who she was today in order to protect Fuyuhiko.    
  
She considered it entirely due to her own failures that Fuyuhiko had no family remaining except for herself. She wondered how twisted this precious ‘loyalty’ of hers had become. Did she kill every other pillar of support in Fuyuhiko’s life because she wanted him to only rely on her?   
  
No.    
Please no.    
  
At the time she considered them her family too. Fuyuhiko Natsumi who she failed to protect, they shared a room since she was young and the only reason she knew how to speak among other girls was because Natsumi’s frank personality always treated her like an equal. The two of them stayed up all night often gossiping about school days as if they were not girls raised by the Natsumi.    
  
Fuyuhiko’s parents were violent, but she would have starved if not for them. They raised her as a tool, but she never would have met Fuyuhiko if not for them. His mother never treated her as a child, but she once attempted to teach Pekoyama to cook and did not lose patience when Pekoyama turned out to be terrible at it. Fuyuhiko’s father put a sword in her hands, but he also taught her how to hold it, and patted her on the head when she did well.    
  
If they were capable of that gentleness, pekoyama how they could be so violent too.    
Fuyuhiko always fought against them and because of that he was always covered in scrapes and bruises. He always thought of himself as weak, because he was not stronger than adults.    
Pekoyama was only obedient.    
No matter how strict they were with her, she simply nodded her head and silently obeyed.    
When she came into contact with other people outside that household she came into contact with normal morality as well and realized what she was doing was “wrong.”    
She kept obeying.   
  


Because for any disobedience the person who would be punished was not her.    
One time she disobeyed. Just once. Fuyuhiko’s father flipped a switch blade and pressed it to his ear cutting a chunk of it off. She watched in slow motion as blood drops fell on the tatami, and sank into the mat. As Fuyuhiko gripped the side of his head crying and swearing in agony, Fuyuhiko’s father warned him that next time he would cut off the whole ear like “Vincent-Fucking-Van-Gogh.”    
  
Pekoyama threw her body down and started to beg the old man to blame her instead.    
That old man smiled.    
“A sword cannot choose who it kills.”    
  
If she ever failed, Fuyuhiko would be punished because he was the one who wielded her. She was after all, just a gift given to him to celebrate his birth, they were together all this time not to be friends but so she could serve him.    
  
Later, holding onto his bandaged ear Fuyuhiko smiled at her and told her not to worry about it. He said one day it would turn into a cool scar.    
  
Pekoyama could not understand why the same people that fed her, also hurt their son so much. She had no idea why this place she had always lived at was not a ‘home’, why the people who raised her was not ‘family’ but that day she came closer to an answer. Perhaps people could choose whether or not to be a human. For Fuyuhiko’s parents, being human was less important than being the leaders of the mob.    
  
Fuyuhiko however was the complete opposite of them. He was never able to stop being human. Even amongst a world of crime, low lifes, and human failures, Fuyuhiko was always himself. He thought that was a weakness. When she saw how desperately he wanted to be someone else, Pekoyama was deeply saddened. 

  
To prevent Fuyuhiko from throwing away someone so precious to her in order to go strong, Pekoyama decided to throw herself away. She thought if she could become his strength, that he might be able to remain the Fuyuhiko she loved.    
  
This family who controlled her food, her life, her well being, took several choices away from her. However, even the days she saw herself as a sword Pekoyama did not think she was completely without choices. Even if she had been raised to be Fuyuhiko’s, she decided that in the end she was the one who had chosen her feelings for him.   
  
A sword cannot choose who it kills, and yet a sword can choose its master. 

  
Another memory. 

 

In middle school Pekoyama had her first taste of normalcy. She also realized back then how much she fell short of other people. It was before she had learned to effectively imitate human behavior. She fell in love with a boy who was not Fuyuhiko. She had no idea at all why Fuyuhiko always seemed so short tempered when she talked about that boy, she just thought he had no interest in the relationships between boys and girls.    
  
One day she confessed to him. She had become drunk on normalcy, and just like in a manga she read once she left a letter in his shoe box telling him about her feelings. She watched with a quiet expression as he found the letter. Then, he read it out in front of everybody and rejected her right there. He said her smile was creepy, that something broke in a girl who smiled like that. 

She did not cry. She did not do anything besides mutter a small apology for bothering him with her feelings. At that moment Fuyuhiko snapped and tackled the boy to the ground. Fuyuhiko usually got in fights, but he was always losing them due to his lack of height. His parents had warned him not to cause too much trouble as he had to pretend to be an upstanding citizen until he was ready to inherit the business at least. Yet, he did not even hesitate.    
  
Fuyuhiko knew even when Peko did not, that she had wanted to cry. “You fucking ungrateful little ingrate! You don’t deserve to see Pekoyama’s smile! Someone like you is never going to grow up into a man that can make her smile!”    
  
Pekoyama did not understand the emotions of a human being well, because she always pushed away what got in the way of her duty. She was always watching Fuyuhiko, paying attention to the changes in his face. In that moment she thought if some part of her feelings were returned that would be enough for her. Even if those feelings went unspoken for the rest of her life, as long as she held them close to her chest…   
  
She could choose to serve him.   
She could choose to love him.    
It might have been her first choice as a human being.    
Perhaps she could never fully become a tool because it would involve throwing away her feelings for him.    
  
After all his parents were the real tools. They threw away their feelings when they had such good children. She killed them without hesitation. It was sad, not because those two people called ‘parents’ in name only had died, but because Fuyuhiko did not have a family. She thought he deserved one, to be surrounded by a family and comforted by a family, not hurt again and again to toughen him up for the family business.    
  
After she killed his parents. Fuyuhiko grabbed her and repeated those words. “A sword cannot choose who it kills.” Holding her like that as she was covered in the blood of his own parents, he reassured her over and over again that this was not her fault.    
  
She wanted to protect him, but he was always protecting her.   
He wanted to protect her, but she was always protecting him.    
  
Just like the sticky blood that had covered her that day, her memories, her feelings were a mess. A tool could never be Fuyuhiko’s family, but perhaps a human could. When she escaped from the Neo World Program she decided to make the first shaky steps towards living as a human.    
  
That was when she realized how hard it was to be human.    
She had no idea how to be human. 

As a sword she only knew how to cut. She cut cleaning through flesh, but blood always splattered on the floor. Things that were destroyed by her sword, cut to pieces, she just left broken.    
  
Creating messes had always been so easy. She could do it without hesitation.    
She had no idea how to clean them up.    
  
Messy, messy, messy. Messy feelings, messy thoughts, and she even made a mess of her own memories. They all flashed by with no distinct order or shape as she tried to sort through them. She tried to connect the many broken strings together into a concept called ‘self’, but she was the one who cut those strings in the first place. She had no idea what she felt in those memories, because she cut herself from her own feelings. She just cut, and cut, and cut, and then looked at the scattered pieces like a torn up photograph in her hands.    
  
Wait, why was she thinking of all this suddenly?   
Was this a revolving lantern?   
No, no, no, there was no way she would allow herself to die. In the past she thought it was acceptable for her to die if Fuyuhiko still lived, but now she knew the pain of being the survivor.    
  
Dying meant she would be leaving that boy all alone.    
Unacceptable.   
She already decided she would live…   
As a human being by his side.    
Pekoyama summoned all her effort to force her eyes open. 

 

🦔   
  
Pekoyama opened her eyes to darkness. At first she was surprised, and then she remembered she had been wearing a blindfold.    
  
Even with her eyes covered a memory flashed before her eyes. She remembered her young master falling away from her, because she had been too slow to notice a desk hurtling towards him. She was supposed to be his shield if he were ever attacked, that was the reason she was allowed to live by his side. 

  
By his side.   
By his side…   
If she could not protect him she would no longer be by his side.    
  
Pekoyama reached out for her master’s hand to grasp it even in darkness. She wanted to grasp the hand she could not ever hold onto.    
  
  


Her beautiful love, that which made her human. It was awkward, clumsy, lacking in any grace at all. She could only continue to grope around in the dark. Desperate, like a blind dog begging. She continued on all fours utterly lost in looking for him.    
  
“F-F-F-Fuyuhiko...” 

  
Not young master, but Fuyuhiko. The name she wanted to call out.    
She wanted to call out his name but all she could do was murmur it. 

Pekoyama was a girl out of touch with her own emotions but, underneath the blindfold she suddenly knew she wanted to cry. She knew she was supposed to be a knight protecting him, but she wished for the opposite. To be the princess of the yakuza lost in the darkness, who Fuyuhiko would find, and carry away in his arms.    
  
This blindfold really was inconvenient. When she could look at nothing else around her, she had to look inside of herself. Pekoyama reached up towards the red cloth that Fuyuhiko had tied around her eyes. It was a symbol of their connection, as long as she wore it he would be her eyes.    
  
That was why she could not bring herself to take it off. What if she opened her eyes and he was not there next to her? Being blinded by this connection was much better.    
  
Peko in her stumbling around finally found her bamboo sword a short distance away from where she had fallen. She pushed the end into the ground and used it to help her stand. By the time she was shakily on her feet Pekoyama finally heard shaky footsteps. Quickly, she on instinct alone swung the bamboo sword back pointing it at whoever was trying to approach her.    
  
“Peko! Goddamnit, why didn’t you scream for help? We could have found you earlier.”   
  
Young master! He came after all just like she thought.   
The young master was always so kind.   
Wait, his second sentence just registered to her.    
  
“Pekoyama-sama, I’m honored to meet a fellow servant of young master Kuzuryuu.”   
  
“...Eh?” Pekoyama stuttered. There was suddenly someone else standing in her spot.    
  
As they made their way back, Pekoyama gently held onto the tails of his suit jacket pinching the fabric between her two fingers. Only when the stranger finished treating all her wounds and cleaning up all visible blood did Fuyuhiko give her permission to take her blindfold off.    
  
“...EH?” Pekoyama repeated.    
  


  
Fuyuhiko’s head was covered in bandages. He was sitting on a chair (that Kirumi probably retrieved for him) sipping tea (that Kirumi also prepared for him) while a silver haired girl with a composed face as beautiful as a dolls stood next to him.    
  
“My name is Tojo Kirumi. I am the Ultimate Maid. Please let me know if you require any service.” She lifted both ends of her elegant dress and gave a curtsy.    
  
“Wh-what do you want from the young master?” Peko stammered.    
  
Someone else had saved the young master instead of her.   
Someone else had protected the young master instead of her.   
Not only that, but Fuyuhiko was not fighting her every step of the way like he did with her.    
  
“It’s best not to fight this one, Peko. She’ll just keep nagging and nagging until you give in like some old-” 

 

As Fuyuhiko said that, suddenly and sharply with her black gloved hands Kirumi grabbed Fuyuhiko by the cheek and pulled his cheek hard. “I am glad to be of assistance, but I am two years younger than you. It’s rude to imply things about my age, a true Gentleman Yakuza would never insult a woman that way.”   
  
“Jeez, jeez damnit fine! I’m sorry so let go already.”    
  
She was pinching the young master’s cheeks.    
  
“You still haven’t answered my question.” Peko continued to press. She should be happy a kind person had come to save them, but she felt something was off, like an itching inside of her brain that would not go away. 

  
“I do not have a master to serve. I am but a stray maid…”   
  
“A ronin maid?”    
  
“Is being a stray maid that much of a problem?”   
  
“Yes, it is incredibly dishonorable. If I am disposed of, or if my last master has no use of me that is the same as having no existence.”    
  
There are worse things than being nothing but a tool.   
For instance, if you were of no use to anybody you were nothing.    
  
  
“I… I…” She felt bad for reacting the way she did. She thought of her underclassmen Ikusaba Mukuro who still reached out a hand to help her, even though she was deeply jealous of Fuyuhiko who treated her like a purpose. If Pekoyama had resolved to become a person, then she wanted to be a person like Ikusaba. She looked at her own hands, trembling hands, hands that had only ever held a sword in them before this point.    
  
Suddenly, Pekoyama heard a soft giggle. Kirumi had brought her gloved hand to her mouth again to politely cover her laugh. “I was only joking. There is no such thing as stray maids, or warrior maids. This is not some kind of battle manga.”    
  
“How am I supposed to know that, I’m a nineteen year old girl who swings around a sword for the yakuza…” Pekoyama muttered to herself in a dry voice.    
  
“How am I ever supposed to fucking tell when either of you are ever joking, you always say everything in the exact same tone of voice!” Fuyuhiko said, slamming his tea back down on the tray.    
  
“What are you talking about?” Pekoyama asked.    
  
“Say something in an angry voice.”   
  
“I am angry.”   
  
“Say something in a sad voice.”   
  
“I am sad.”   
  
“Say something in a happy voice.”   
  
“I’m always happy when I’m around you, young master.”   
  
Fuyuhiko looked away his cheeks turning red, but he gave no other response. 

 

“A maid is supposed to be able to read the mood and respond accordingly. Sometimes humor is needed to calm a master, I would tell jokes to my master.” Kirumi responded calmly.    
  
Pekoyama grabbed the ends of her skirt, crushing the fabric between her fingertips. “H-he’s not your master.”    
  
“For the last time Peko, I ain’t your master anymore.” The person to disagree with her was not Kirumi, but rather Fuyuhiko. He finally stood up out of his seat to turn that demonic glare of his towards Kirumi. “Listen, I’m sure you’ve already figured it out by now but Pekoyama and I are both Yakuza. Villains like us don’t get saved. I don’t wanna sound like an ungrateful brat but you’d best steer clear of us-”   
  
“It is clear to me you desire to become something far more than just a Yakuza boss.  If you want to know why I saved you, it was partially for selfish reasons. I thought I could help bring you to your full potential.”   
  
Fuyuhiko was still reeling from when Ryoma called him weak. He had beaten down many times by the violent world of crime. It was supposed to toughen him up, but it did the opposite it just made him more fragile instead. Not only had he had all his worst fears confirmed, but when he needed to help his friend Hinata he was no help at all. He was worried too about Komaeda, even though he knew that guy was no good on his own Fuyuhiko left him alone too many times. That’s not what a good friend should do.    
  
Fuyuhiko wanted to prove himself. Even if it was only to himself. He knew no matter who he became. Pekoyama would still embrace him but he could not accept that kind of all accepting love. Not while he could not accept the current himself.    
  
He lived his whole life fully aware of what he was. He was lowlife scum. He was yakuza. He could not live normally. He could not be around normal, good people. He could only look forward to dying a dog’s death. 

 

Perhaps, his whole life he had been waiting to hear those words. “N-nobody ever told me I could be… something besides a Yakuza.” Even so, Fuyuhiko tightened his fist. He did not want to drag someone else down with him. Besides, there was someone who would walk the road to hell with him by their own choice. “No. You’re way too kind. You’d die if you followed us. Don’t you have something else you want more?”    
  
Kirumi closed both of her eyes. Her face was as beautiful as a doll’s. As she lowered her head, her neatly combed silver hair fell in front of her face covering one of her eyes. “I hold no opinions or desires of to speak.” She touched her hand to her chest as if speaking from the bottom of her heart. “As a maid, my only desire is to fulfill the desires of others. So please, think about what you desire for yourself, and what you desire from me. No matter the situation, no matter what happens, I am here to serve everyone.”    
  
Pekoyama tilted her head the empty look in her eyes mirroring that of her underclassman. She saw red, or rather her eyes were red. The color of blood. Such unpleasant eyes that her own parents had thrown her away and left her on the doorstep of a Yakuza family. Kirumi’s soft green eyes seemed the exact opposite of hers, rather than empty eyes they were eyes overflowing with kindness.    
  
She understood the difference now between the two of them. Even if they both desired to be tools, Kirumi did it out of a genuine desire to help. 

 

Pekoyama was a sword. She could only cut down what was in front of her. She cut, and cut, and cut. In her eyes she saw red, the red of Fuyuhiko’s parents splattered across the floor. She practiced 100 sword swings. She killed them 100 times without hesitating once, because that’s all she was capable of.    
  
Kirumi was the exact opposite of a sword. She was a mop. She cleaned, she made things better, her presence made a view more beautiful. She could say the words to Fuyuhiko that Pekoyama always wanted to say but never could. She could get him to clean his act like it was easy.    
  
For their entire lives Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko existed in a world of black and whites. They were aware that the world of the light existed, but they could only stand in the shadows together. If someone else could pull Fuyuhiko into the light then where did that leave her?   
  
Criminals and Innocent People.    
Their lives as Yakuza and their lives pretending to be Normal Students.    
Clean and filthy.    
Black and white.    
Hope and despair.    
Human and sword.    
Selfless and selfish.    
Which one should she choose?    
Was… was her desire to be a person just selfish? “W-why…?” Pekoyama muttered again as if she had just mishread.    
  
“I just want to live a life that’s helpful to others…” Kirumi said, and effortlessly she smiled. Her smile was so warm and genuine that seeing it, Pekoyama wanted to melt away. 

 

🦔   
  
She was always helping others.    
It started when her mother died leaving her to take care of her family.    
After that she just kept on doing it, like a bad habit she could not quit.    
  
Tojo Kirumi seemed like an existence that was too good to be true.    
Dreams, ideals, hopes, when they fall short of reality they can seem like they were all just lies. Therefore it was possible for a more cynical person to call the ‘too selfless’ Kirumi just a lie. When people stop being humans they can become whatever they want. They can even achieve their ideals. They can be a better version of themselves that they never thought was possible.    
  
It’s so difficult just being human you know? If you were to remove that day to day struggle, without hesitation, anxiety, fear, you would probably be capable of a lot more than you were now. That was why, even if it was all just a lie I think it is understandable. Her decision to throw away everything about herself, so she could be a better herself for the sake of others.    
  
Her desire was to be rid of desire.    
She selfishly, wanted to no longer have a self.    
Being human is hard, it’s painful, even I don’t know what makes it worth all of that trouble.    
  
Tojo Kirumi was not born a maid. She did not consider herself born for the sake of serving others. That would just be silly. At one point she thought she was nothing more than a normal teenage girl who liked being helpful.    
  
She was diligent. She saw the best in others around her. She wanted to help guide them to her fullest potential. Her classmates treated her like an angel. She was not sure she liked that. Her only desire at first had been to help her friends, but the more she helped them out the less they seemed like friends to her. Every time they called her ‘Angel’ or ‘Mother’ she was reminded she had ceased to be a normal girl in her eyes. 

 

If Kirumi had one flaw, it would be that she could not say no. The only time she ever refused someone was if their request was straight up impossible. If every single request was written on paper, she would have drowned in them, and have been washed away in a paper sea. There would have been nothing left of her, as she was already invisible in the eyes of her classmates. 

 

As she worked, worked, worked, and only piled up more work for herself she soon began to feel like a girl desperately trying to swim in the middle of a storm with thirty foot high waves. Every time she struggled to the surface, another wave could collapse on top of her, and break over her head.    
  
Kirumi started feeling less and less like a human being occupying a body. Her limbs had strings attached to them, and her body was made up of wooden joints. She was just a puppet dancing to the tunes of the desires of others.    
  
She started to wonder if she could do anything, a single thing for herself. How was living for the others around her living? It was like she was watching life pass her by in the front row of a black and white art film cinema. As she watched the movie play on screen, secretly she began to connect to the character who was a part of all these stories Tojo Kirumi but never allowed to be her own main character.    
  
She began to desire for herself.   
Rather, she began to desire herself.    
She wanted a request of her own, a wish of her own, and she wanted someone else to grant it because then it would be natural.    
  
Her secret desire, it did not need to be anyone special.    
It would be fine if it was just one person.    
One person to treat her as an equal.    
  
**NOIR SCENE**   
  
She remembered now, at the time she started to desire this she became close to a certain young master. Kirumi in middle school had been noticed for her talents, and invited to serve a house of great influence. When she was first introduced to the household, she noticed the heir to the household was a young man of the same age. From the moment she first laid eyes on him she worried about the young heir’s well being. He was always unsure of himself, and scared to take the first step forward.    
  
She thought it was her responsibility to nurture him. However, in a twist of fate she ended up learning more from him. He shared all kinds of books with her and gave her a peek of his world. Even though he was afraid of everyone else, he was always gently smiling at her. Kirumi thought he would continue to show her that smile, even if she was not the Ultimate Maid.    
  
He would seek her out and talk to her again, and again. Through his persistence she found herself slowly regaining her humanity. As she regained herself piece by piece, she realized her own feelings. She had fallen for the one master who ever treated her as an equal.    
  


**NOIR SCENE**

 

Projected on the black and white screen in front of her was a scene of her own memories. 

 

**AMOUR MUTUEL**

 

The film was entirely silent. The silver haired girl waits at the train station. She pulls a black hat over her head to hide her face, as if she is in mourning. The black smoke of the approaching train billows in the approaching sky.    
  
Suddenly, a boy approaches her from behind. He looks about her age, but his clothes are a much higher quality than hers. He looks lost and confused. He reaches out for her hand, his mouth moving as if loudly calling for her name. Than the male actor tries to pull at her hand so she will look at him but she pulls away.    
  
**NOIR SCENE** **  
** The film cuts to dialogue frames written in white calligraphy on a black background.    
  


**Kirumi**   
“I was employed by the master… your father… for a very long time. However, that ends today. I must leave.”    
  
  


**Young Master** **  
** “If you must leave, then please tell me why.”    
  
**Kirumi**   
“That is because. Young master, will you promise me something? What I am about to tell you must remain here… My secret…”    
  
**Young Master** **  
** “Alright, I understand. I promise.”   
  


**Kirumi** **  
** “Thank you. I am convinced you of all people will keep your promise, young master. Definitely. Because, you are the man I love.” 

 

**Young Master** **  
** “W-why…?”   
  


**Kirumi** **  
** “You have a gentle smile,  you’re my prince who always comes to rescue me, and I never thought anybody in this world would be my equal…”    
  
**Young Master** **  
** “And that… is a problem? I don’t understand, Kirumi. You’re always so kind to others why are you afraid of kindness? I see you as my equal, and a woman who-”    
  
**Kirumi**   
“You musn’t. Please, don’t say such a thing!”   
  
The actress pushes the actor away. As she turns away from him, the actress embraces herself silently. After all there will be no one left to embrace her when he is gone. The train arrives, she steps on the platform only for him to grab her hand once more.    
  
She turns around suddenly and tears her hand out of his. For a moment she is absolutely horrified at having raised a hand at her master. The camera in a close up to the actresses face, shows that there are tears in her eyes as she holds her gloved hand over her mouth.    
  
**Kirumi** **  
** “This is what I am afraid of! My feelings will hinder you… They will pull you away from your destiny… My love will become a bad influence to you. That is why… I must leave.”

**  
** Even after she rebuked him so coldly. The actor still reaches out and touches her gloved hand, and slowly pulls the glove off so he can hold onto her bare hand. 

**Young Master** **  
** “Your feelings of love for me could never be a bad thing! I won’t let you talk that way about yourself, Kirumi!”    
  
Kirumi, that was her name.   
She remembered who she was when he called it out.    
All strength dissolves from her body, and she clings to him visibly crying without sound. They look like tears she has been waiting for years to cry.    
  
If only the movie ended at that scene it would have been a happy ending. 

 

**ROUGE SCENE**   
  
After she finally gave into her desire, she became close to the master. Due to that, she became aware of the young master’s father’s real business. He was involved in the criminal underworld. Her conscience as a maid would not allow her to help someone hurting others, but she had also promised never to leave the young master’s side again.   
  
The young master wanted no part in his father’s business. He said even if they were poor, even if they were unhappy, he did not need a special life he just needed a life with her in it. He took her hands and the two of them made plans to escape from the world of shadows. They both ran towards the light. 

 

**ROUGE SCENE** **  
** **  
** Color finally returned to the film. The first color depicted in the whole film.    
  
**ROUGE.** **  
** **  
** Her master’s blood splattered all over her. Their escape plans were found out, and suddenly when a man came from behind to kill her, her master put himself between her and the knife. She screamed, but there was no sound in that film. Even when she screamed it made no noise.    
  
**Young Master:**

“K-K-Kirumi don’t die yet. You have to live. Even if it’s for someone else besides me, you have to live for them.”    
  
The final order of her master.    
They had already reached their happy ending, so why had the movie continued on to tragedy? What flaw sparked this? She realized her own mistake as she felt her master’s ice cold hand in hers.    
  
  
This was all because she desired something for herself. She dirtied herself. She became so selfish, every time she was around him. This was a punishment for her desires.    
If only she had never desired the young master.   
If she was simply his servant.   
If she was a maid.   
She would have been able to protect him.   
He never would have sacrificed himself for her sake.    
That was right her master’s last words were not a wish for her to continue living.    
They were a curse.    
She could only live for the sake of others from now on.    
If it were not for that desire, this pain in her chest would not be there.    
  
That was the tale of the girl who decided to throw away desire.    
And the maid who only lived for the desires of others. 

 

🦔

 

Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama had no idea how long they had been unconscious, or even how Hinata’s fight with Sakakura turned out. Both of them had the sense that Hinata would not lose, but at the same time they were worried for their friend, he was kind of an unreliable guy.    
  
Kirumi posed that they split up and look for any signs of either Hinata or Matsuda. One person would walk with Pekoyama who needed someone to guide her, and the other would search alone until they met again. 

 

As she walked clinging to the fabric of Fuyuhiko’s suit, for the first time being next to his side made her feel uneasy. She felt a sickness somewhere inside of her, underneath her skin, in her stomach perhaps.    
  
“Y-young master…?”   
  
“Huh? Peko, it’s not like you to sound so scared. Is wearing the blindfold getting to you or something?”    
  
It was not like her. She supposed Fuyuhiko would know. She only knew who she was when he was around. For a long stretch of the game she had lived without him. She wondered if she had truly learned to live without him. After all, in the end she betrayed her first real friend Hinata in order to bring him back.    
  
“Why did you never drink the tea I made for you?”    
  
For a time she existed only to serve him. She was only good at holding a sword. She could not cook, nor clean. She could not even make the sweets that young master liked so much. 

 

“U-umm… It tasted bad. So bad I wanted to spit it out.”    
  
Whenever she brought him tea, he would drink the whole cup in front of her. After awhile he told her he hated tea and not to make him any.    
  
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”   
  
“I know I’m an asshole but there’s no way I’m going to tell you right to your face that your tea sucks. What’s the big deal it’s just tea?”    
  
It was not just tea, they were like this with everything. They each knew this feeling was mutual, and yet still they never once spoke their true feelings to each other about everything. Perhaps it was not just a tragedy that kept them apart. 

  
If they were just fundamentally incompatible, then a relationship that took nineteen years and never got any closer would never get any better. There could be someone better. Even if there was, Pekoyama did not want to let go. She did not want to let go of the one person who had ever been her family. 

 

She reached forward, trying to take his hand.   
Fuyuhiko did not notice that she had stopped and kept walking forward.   
His hand slid out of her grip, and her fingers closed on empty air.    
  
That was probably wrong of her.    
  
When Pekoyama searched with Kirumi, she lifted her blindfold without permission to look at the girl when her back was turned. She inspected the area around them to be sure that no one else was around.    
  
When she did, quickly she drew her sword and held it at Kirumi’s neck. “What are your intentions towards the young master?” 

  
“Pekoyama-sama, is something wrong?”    
  
“Stop calling me -sama. There’s no level of difference between us we’re both…”    
  
“People meant to serve others, I know. I was wondering if there was something wrong with you. If you were broken in some way.”   
  
“Huh…?”   
  
  
“Don’t you think, as someone who serves the master and wishes for his happiness that you should be happy that I want to help him? Yet this whole time, you’ve only met me with your suspicions.”    
  
“N-no,…my loyalty.”   
  
“Is merely a desire to have him for yourself.”    
  
“I…”   
  
“You detest being alone.” Kirumi put her hand on her heart, only showing one eye as she leaned forward towards Peko. “You are the young master’s sword, right? Somewhere along the way you must have become a broken sword.” 

“W-what…”   
  
“It’s wrong.” 

“Why is it wrong? Are you saying broken things can’t be fixed?”    
  
Like their relationship.   
More broken than anything else.   
The closer they were the more they fell apart.    
  
“No, that would be a cruel thing to say don’t you think? There are tales of people being pieced back together and nurtured by the others around them. I love them from the bottom of my heart.  Broken people can still be fixed, but inferior ones are simply replaced.” }   
  
Kirumi pulled on the black leather gloves that covered her hands. She had never taken them off. As long as she kept them on she could remember, this was a job, not a person.    
  
_ I’m sorry, Pekoyama.  _ _   
_ _ I can see the pain in your eyes.  _ _   
_ _ It hurts… _ _   
_ _ I know better than anyone else. _ _   
_ _ It’s better this way…  _ _   
_ _ If you start to long for the light, you’ll only fall deeper into the shadows.  
  
_

She granted everyone's wishes.   
She was sick of wishes.  
If only nobody wished for anything.   
Then they might actually find happiness.   
  



	12. Life is Art

Medaka due to her high developmental speed, retained memories from a few days after her birth. If Enoshima Junko’s brain was like a computer continually running and rerunning calculations and analyzing data automatically whether she wanted it to or not, Medaka’s brain was like a sponge retaining all information but not necessarily digesting it.

Sometimes she found it frustrating that she could remember useless memories from her time as an infant, but her memories did not extend so far back that she could remember if her mother smiled at her after she was born, or if her mother ever got the chance to hold her in her arms before dying. Nobody ever told Medaka that story, because no one ever thought a girl like her even needed a mother.

She remembered too the first time she was welcomed into the Kurokami Household. The father she met for the first time, the legal mother, and her elder siblings were all nice people but she also remembered thinking it was a bit nasty that the Kurokami Group was nothing more than a nice coffin that was prepared for her.   
  
She locked herself away in that household reading through all the books in the library. She filtered through all that knowledge and stored it away in her head. No matter how much she read she could not understand the difference between herself, and others. When she occasionally strayed away from non-fiction, in the books she read children her age were taken care of by their parents, they held hands with them, they played silly imaginary games with other children, got into fights over stupid things and then cried and made up. No amount of books she read could help Medaka understand why she was so far away from that kind of life. She could observe the behavior of other people around her and read them like they were characters in her books, and yet knowing them and understanding them seemed so different.   
  
Every time she met an adult it was the same. At first, the adults were amazed and quite interested in her, showering her with praise and treating her as the prodigy of prodigies. But not long after first meeting her, they started to find her sickening and left. _“How creepy always staring silently like that, never speaking!” “You’re just ignoring us because you think you’re better than everyone!” “Just like a doll!”_ One time an adult complained to her father about her behavior, saying she had “no idea how to act human.” Medaka thought that was untrue because she had read a book on manners and memorized it after all. By that time she was two years old, and it had already been decided to make her the Kurokami Head. While she was obviously intelligent enough to one day inherit the family business it would be unfitting if she did not know how to act like a head of the family.   
  
Her father as usual took care of her every need while at the same time remaining indirect with her. She was set up with a tutor who would teach her how to act properly around others. Apparently, a girl who always remained quiet, and stared with empty eyes of disinterest would not make a good face of the company. Most teachers quit when Medaka learned the material faster than she could teach it, but this was different, because when it came to the persona she was supposed to present, it was not about knowing, so much as understanding.  


“A Kurokami does not rely on others. We manipulate them, we use them, and if needed we toss them away. You are already far better than everyone else around you, you don’t need others.”  
  
All of her other teacher’s quit. This one somehow lasted until Middle School.   
Medaka wished he had quit earlier.   
  
“You must never express emotion. A polite smile is permitted, but you must never show anger and sadness, and crying is out of the question.”   
  
She realized this man was not teaching her how to be more human, but rather how to act like others expected her to act as the daughter of a rich family. If she wanted, she could try to predict the face that person she was with wanted most to see and wear a mask with that face. The thought of continually hiding her face, hoping the others around her might accept her behavior as human then made her strangely lonely.

When she was younger she often asked herself the question of who she was born to be. In that household, she learned she was not born to be a child, not born to be her own person, and not even born to be a human being. Yet at the same time she was born with good health, more money than she could ask for, and more talent than everyone.  
  
One time when she complained in an emotionless voice, the teacher lectured her. “Don’t be so spoiled.”   
  
Why was she born?   
She was born to be a spoiled princess inside the coffin called the Kurokami Household.

To Medaka coffins seemed lonely.   
She had no idea if there was life after death or not.   
Once a person was buried, they disappeared.   
They were underneath the ground somewhere cold and alone.   
No one could ever see them again.   
  
Medaka read in many text books on child development that a person’s personality was based on their formative experiences, first with their mother, then with their family, then with their friends. She wondered how she who had never interacted with anybody could become a person.   
  
Perhaps she could become the person that this tutor wanted her to become. A person who completely discards their own viewpoint, and use her natural distance from others to compile the views of everyone around her into an objective beauty. She hesitated. Afraid, if she did that her face might crumble away. 

That day the tutor called her spoiled, she felt something. She did not know what emotion exactly, she had seen adults express anger and frustration at her sometimes even raising her voices and shouting at her. After all she had never been a child and nobody really treated her like one. She knew what the external displays of anger looked like, but she did not know what it was supposed to feel like on the inside.   
  
All Medaka knew was that she wanted to be alone in her coffin. If she was going to be alone regardless, she wanted to isolate herself further. It was no fun, seeing other people when she knew she could never be like them. She played hooky that day and hid herself on the mansion grounds. She expected with her talent of the Ultimate Hide and Seek champion no one would find her.   
  
At the end of the day a ball rolled in front of her feet. An exhausted looking two year old boy looked at her with tears welling up in his eyes. “Medaka-chan we haven’t gotten to play together in so long! I finally came over to your house, but you weren’t even here! I was so worried!”   
  
That was right, in one person’s eyes she was human.   
When she was around him she started wanting to act more human.   
For the purpose of staying by one person’s side, she became fascinated with humans and began to study them, like she was a biologist in the books she read.   
A man and a woman were created in a garden together.   
They were the first human beings, she read that in a story too.   
That day Hitoyoshi and her played in the flowers.   
She thought that the place where she played with Hitoyoshi was much like that garden.   
A place where she could be created as a human.   
  
She remembered reaching out and touching the tears on his face. She held his face against his, because she wanted to know what the wetness of shedding tears and crying would be like. His cheek touching hers, feeling the warmth of another person for the first time, Medaka muttered, “I’m sorry, Zenkichi… I wasn’t thinking about how you were feeling.”   
  
Lonely people often do not think of the feelings of others.   
How could they?   
When they are so far away they cannot even see them. 

In the present Medaka stared at her own hand. “How about it Zenkichi, have I become human enough yet? Can I return to the garden with you when this is all over?”

When she was younger, everyone around her treated her as an oddity that could not understand others. At this moment Medaka was sure, that anybody as isolated as she was would have turned out that way.

It was impossible to understand the feelings of others if there was no one to share your feelings with. Eventually you would even begin to forget about your own feelings. That was why Medaka loved humans so much, because she wanted to learn from them.  
  
She looked away from her hand up at the pair of human beings who were accompanying her in her search for Shiranui. Both of them suddenly had stopped in the middle of the road.   
  
“There’s an invisible wall! If we cross the boundary right now, we will be stepping into the demon realm and our souls will shatter!” Gundham announced, as he staggered back and stared in fear at nothing at all.   
  
“If there’s a leyline that will lead us to the demon realm the moment we step over it, do you think we could use it to return to my kingdom?” Sonia asked him, completely serious.   
  
“Black queen! Do you really want to return to the citadel of the damned so badly? Does your heart yearn for evil once more! Then, I swear to be your escort and guide you home. The only thing I ask in return is your immortal soul.”   
  
“You can have my soul, my heart, and everything else!”   
  
“Umm… R-really? I mean, kekekekeke, as if I would ever undertake such an oath. I only desire to use you for your power! The blood of a virgin under the moonless sky will unlock my true form.”   
  
“Huh? But you already know I’m not a virgin.”   
  
“Th-there’s no need to mention that here. Kurokami’s sensitive ears could overhear. We don’t want to taint her with our darkness.”   
  
“It’s too late you can’t take it back. It’s like first love, or a first kiss, it’s a special kind of magic once you make a promise like that you have to take responsibility-”   
  
Tanaka had turned all the way red by that point. He wrapped his scarf up around his face all the way to his nose to hide it. As usual it was difficult for an outsider to tell what they were talking about.   
  
“You made the promise, so now you have to become my knight and take me home!”   
  
“I-I…only if I can become a dark knight.”   
  
Medaka looked at those two and thought to herself while she needed to learn to understand humans to become more human, perhaps those two were not the best examples of human beings.

Kei calling her someone who only thinks of herself had made her think of the past, but she thought she should probably drag those two back to reality. “Senpai? Can I ask you something? I don’t understand, what did I do to make Munakata hate me?”    
  
“His heart seethes with an emotion that becomes venom in his veins, and slowly as he is poisoned by his own feelings his skin turns green with sickness.” Gundham answered her.   
  
“What?”   
  
“He’s saying Munakata’s jealous.” Sonia translated.   
  
“He is a lonely warrior who has lived by the blade his whole life. Nothing more than a wandering sword. Until, finally he found a master. He thought it would be enough to remain by that person’s side, but slowly he began to encounter forbidden feelings…”

“Oh, Munakata has a crush on Hitoyoshi? Oooooh, there was a drama just like this once. A samurai having feelings for another who would only call him friend. His unrequited love was so beautiful, and yet so painful to him like a double edged sword.”   
  
“Wait what!” Medaka interrupted. “Are you telling me there’s another person besides me that has feelings for Zenkichi?” The concept never even occurred to her.   
  
“There’s Komaeda, Munakata, Matsuda, Kumagawa probably would if he was not obsessed with Junko, even I think he’s someone as alluring as the devil.” Gundham spoke quite plainly for once.   
  
There was a lot of competition! Zenkichi was always so much better at making friends than her. Medaka suddenly clutched at her head in dismay shouting towards the empty sky above. “Why is my Zenkichi such a philanderer!”

“Hm? Kurokami aren’t you someone who loves all of humanity? That means there’s quite a bit of competition for your heart too.”

“I’m the philanderer! I’m so sorry, Zenkichi!”   
  
Their light hearted conversations quickly came to an end. The light atmosphere around them was unstable, like helium and could ignite at the slightest spark.   
  
Gundham was the first one to notice. He immediately instructed Medaka in a cold voice. “Cover up Sonia’s eyes right now.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“What bitter nostalgia I smell. This is the scent of blood.” Gundham said as he inhaled deeply.   
  
“I want to see!” Sonia said, almost too eagerly.   
  
“Princess, there are certain things once you see them you cannot go back to being human.”   
  
Medaka holding Sonia back with her hands over Sonia’s eyes realized what Gundham was talking about, when they finally reached the source of the scent. There was a corpse nailed to a wall as if crucified. Half of the skin on the body had rotted away. Its skull, ribs, and spine were all showing. Despite the rotten state of the skin, the organs were all intact and spilling out. She saw intestines like uncoiled rope reaching out on the ground. Half of the man’s face was torn away, and the skin on the other half of his face sagged. He still had one eye and half of his lips left.   
  
The sight was absolutely horrible. Medaka wondered for a moment why Gundham had not asked her to close her own eyes. She wanted to remain human too.   
  
They both stared in silence not knowing what to do with the body or who it belonged to. Sonia wiggled in impatience against Medaka’s hand, upset at being left out.

  
“What… what is this?” Medaka finally asked.   
  
“What wonderful colors! This must be art!”   
  
All three of them heard the voice of a strange girl they did not recognize.

 

🦔

 

“Nyahahaha! Don’t look at me like that, I’m way too clean to have done it. Don’t you see that blood everywhere?”   
  
“Is this really something you should laugh about?” To Medaka every single human being was important, and one of them had just died.   
  
“Nyahahahaha! There’s no reason to carry bad thoughts with ya! You gotta live every day like it’s bright, cheery, and fun!...So says Atua. Besides, he must have died for a reason so I’m sure he wasn’t unhappy with his end.” That girl seemed completely insensitive to the emotions of others. Even Medaka’s barely restrained anger did not faze her. “I’m Yonaga Angie by the way, a foreign exchange student and part of the 79th class.”   
  
Sonia immediately turned around wiggling her way out of Medaka’s hands. She grabbed Angie by each of her hands with excitement and glittering eyes. “Another foreign exchange student! Tell me, do you love Japan’s culture as much as I do? What are your favorite dramas? Name your top five serial killers?”   
  
“Hmm, no I don’t really care.” Angie immediately cut her off. Just as easily she pulled her hands away and began wiping them off on the orange coat she was wearing. “It’s really rude you know, to touch a member of the faithful like that.”

“Poor senpai, she just wants to make a friend who’s like her…” Medaka whispered to Gundham.   
  
“She seeks a fellow lost soul, rejected from heaven and hell and forced to wander the plane of mortals eternally,” Gundham whispered back to her.   
  
“The faithful? Atua?” Sonia repeated.   
  
“The god of my island is always with me, speaking to me with His divine voice.”   
  
Sonia completely ignored the rejection and went starry eyed again. She tried to grab Angie’s hands, only for Angie to effortlessly dodge out of the way. “I know what this is! Cults, the land of japan has many cults that prey upon those who fall within the cracks of society. I’ve always wondered what someone like that would think like, someone so lonely that they think they cannot belong anywhere, or belong to anyone. A person so desperate to belong will follow anyone.”   
  
Sonia was lacking in self awareness. Medaka flinched slightly hearing those words.

“Calling Atua a cult. How insolent. You will be punished for six generations.”

“Punish me if you must, but think for the sake of my people. If they suffered from six generations of poor rulers, my kingdom would fall into ruin.”   
  
“Huh, why should I care about that? You’re the one who made Atua mad.” Angie said.   
  
Medaka spoke up. “There’s all sorts of supernatural beings in this world, I don’t really think it’s fair for us to call the religion of her home island false.” She thought of Ajimu Najimi, an impossible existence, an oddity among oddities. An important person to her who was now dead.

“I have knowledge of the nine realms, and I have carved the name of every demon into my right arm, and yet I know nothing of this Atua…”

“I see, our destinies must have intertwined so you can learn about Atua. If you become a believer now, you’ll be forgiven as long as you recruit five more members, and have each of them recruit five more.”   
  
“A pyramid scheme…!” Medaka straight manned.   
  
Hearing the word destiny, Sonia relinquished her skepticism. “I suppose if Medaka-chan and I were born to be princesses, then you must have been born to hear the voice of Atua.”

Sonia and Angie.   
A girl from a small nation and a girl from an island.   
They were both born in someplace far away from here.   
“Distance” was the best word to define them.   
Sonia tried to close the gap by being kind to all she met.   
She believed she had to live in service of others.   
Angie did not want to close the gap at all.   
She seemed lacking in kindness.   
They were so different.   
Reserved and tactless.   
Always thinking of others, always thinking of herself.   
One of them only ever put on a polite smile.   
The other laughed rudely and freely in other’s faces.   
They both believed their actions had meaning.

Sonia clapped her hands happily together. “You must have been born to become part of a cult as well.”  
  
When she noticed a hostile look in Angie’s eyes, Medaka decided to reign Sonia in. “Senpai, do you really understand cults or do you just know them because you read about them in a book?”

Sonia suddenly turned around an odd look in her eyes, like she was possessed by someone else’s emotions. “Well, it is not my own experience but when that young boy put a screw in my heart I saw flashes of his memories. In the past he was associated with the Kiga (Hunger) cult, I encountered them in my research apparently they believe the act of living is to slowly dirty oneself, while death is the only thing capable of purifying that filth.”  
  
“Eh…? Kumagawa was involved with people like that?”   
  
“Did he not confide in you?”   
  
Medaka’s expression worsened. She knew nothing at all about Kumagawa Misogi. He may as well have been the human embodiment of a mystery to her. He never once let her sympathize with him, and never told her his true feelings.   
  
There was someone he had told. In that moment she pictured Kumagawa screwed against a crucifix just like that corpse had been, the one to embrace his beaten up body, and remove his crown of thorns had not been her. A pair of hands with red tipped nails reached up, and throwing the crown away embraced him. She wrapped herself around him like a snake.

Enoshima Junko, Kumagawa had confided in that girl but not her.  
She was not jealous or anything, she was just confused.   
Of all people, why did Kumagawa acknowledge Junko as a human first before her?   
What was the difference between the two of them?   
No matter how many times she asked, the girl at the other side of the mirror did not answer.

Sonia averted her eyes slightly. “I see, Kumagawa is much like our Komaeda. He is someone who makes it difficult for others to be kind to him. I have many regrets about my class, I would have liked to be kind to that boy who needed kindness the most.”

Angie tilted her head. “Why are you guys suddenly talking about a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter? You’re strange!”   
  
Medaka stepped up to Angie looking her in the eyes. She noticed the girl’s eyes were a pale, lifeless color. “You’re the strange one. We’re all sad because someone died, we’re all anxious because we don’t know what happened to our friends. Don’t you understand our feelings?”   
  
“No, because they’re your feelings, not mine.”   
  
“What are your feelings then? Are you scared that there’s a killer on the loose?”   
  
“There’s three serial killers in this game instead of two! What wonderful luck.”   
  
“Senpai, not now…”   
  
“Hmmmm, nope! Nyahahaha! Why are you being so worried? If people die in this world, they were probably being bad and deserved it because Atua said so. If people get saved, then they deserve to be happy because Atua said so. There’s no real reason to worry about anything it’s all out of our hands.”   
  
“W-why do you feel that way?”

Angie hesitated for a moment, her pale eyes and dark face puzzled. “Why do you keep asking me about my feelings?” She suddenly, impulsively swung her head back and forth. “Hey, why are you doing that? Why indeed?”

Before Medaka could respond, Angie stopped playing around and answered her question. With a distant look in her eyes, as if looking for some far off island she said, “I feel this way, yep, yep, it’s because I’ve always felt like this since the moment I was born.”

🦔

 

The island Angie was born on did in fact have a local religion where “Atua” was the sole deity. It was a natural custom that had arisen from the people on the island, so it was about as real or fake as the hundreds of stories of other gods.

Whether gods are real or not, myths are told by human beings to each other. This was the myth of Yonaga Angie. When she was born lightning struck their house, and the sky thundered to herald her arrival, or so her parents told her.

So it was said before she came into their lives, her parents lived dirty lives of misfortune. Both of them refused to work and what little money they were given, they wasted on their vices, they troubled their neighbors with their debts. Atua seeing this, blessed them with a child capable of guiding them. She was born of his will. Her parents, crawling around in the dark saw a seering, blinding light and came to understand the meaning behind their sudden and unexpected child.   
  
When she was born, even though they had no money, and no place to live they saw the universe, the stars and all of god's creation contained in her pale eyes that sparkled like soft star light. The child was a light given unto them for them to follow.   
  
“Look at this child’s colorless eyes, pale gray hair on the head is proof of innocence. This child is special, she probably hears the voice of our god.”

They not only told her, but they shared the good news with the people of the island. Their god finally appeared before them. The silent god finally had a voice in this world. They were generous with their blessings at first, and wanted to share the miracle of Angie with the whole island.   
  
The previously empty temple a place of silent reverie became filled with the racuous needy. Deciding to live piously from now on, both parents made their home in the temple, and kept their daughter separate from the rest of the world. As long as she stood above others on that altar no dirty hands would ever soil her. She no longer needed to wear dirty rags of a vagabond and destitute family, now they could clothe her in the finest cloths on the island.   
  
From a young age, Angie was kind and clever. She always helped people in need and made them happy, because that was her mission. Angie, full of Atua's spirit, and a child pure of heart would listen all day long to adults intoxicated with misery and woe. In pain and unknowing of what to do they sought a voice to guide them.   
  
As she listened to their stories, day in and day out, she was tempted by a black rabbit on her shoulder.   
  
"Isn't it just awkward. A full grown adult coming to cry to a child about their problems? Do you really want to sit here all day, aren't you hungry?"   
  
Agnie answered. "Atua told me, Man shall not live on bread alone." 

The rabbit jumped to a high place. In the windowsill, outside Angie could see in an instant the lives of everyone on the island. And he said to her. "Aren't these stories just yawn inducing? They're all having more fun than you are, then they come to whine at you are they all crazy?"  
  
Angie answered. "Atua told me, that I only serve him."   
  
When the rabbit failed in his tempting, he left. Angie listened to the problems of those who prostrated their heads at her feet, and begged them to take her to paradise. In her great kindness, she cried tears for every lost soul.   
  
As the island celebrated her savior, her parents thought only of their own good fortune. They turned Atua's house into a marketplace, where they forced others to compete, and pay money for Angie's favor.  They forgot how blessed they were already that Atua sent Angie to them, and only accumulated more and more greed. As they piled up sins like stones, soon the weight of their evil would sink the whole island.   
  
And lo, Atua sent forth a storm. And a great rumbling sounded from the deep. And the earth shook. A deep fault appeared on the massive island. Atua sunk half of the island into the sea, for the salvation of the other half. Atua saves, and Atua destroys. His forceful gusts of wind, and crashing waves reminded the island of his presence.   
  
The temple as well was split in half. When the girl woke up the next morning, she had been spared from Atua's wrath. She found her parents as nothing more than crushed corpses on the ground, bloated by the rain as punishment for their greed.   
  
They who thought they were special.   
They died just like that.   
The clouds parted and two rabbits appeared, their fur the color of ash, their eyes red as fire. When they spoke, she felt herself inhaling cinder.   
  
“Your parents were so dim-witted. They even tried to turn your island’s religion into some ridiculous cult for their own profit.”   
  
“You always played along because you wanted to please them, but you never once heard the gods’ voices.”   
  
"You're crying because you know the paradise they wanted so desperately does not exist. It's a fairy tale that humans created with their imaginations."   
  
“The gods, and buddhas don’t exist either. When you die, you just become nothing. You just stop feeling anything. Your heart stops, your brain stops, and you return to the earth.”   
  
“Humans cannot accept something so simple. It must be difficult to be so dumb.”   
  
“Just like your parents. They made all that fuss about how you were special, and they were building a cult around you for your sake, and then after causing you all that trouble they just went and died for no reason.”   
  
She felt the black rabbit's words licking at her like flames, but she remained steadfast in her devotion. No other voice mattered to her, no other words, but the true ones she heard in her head.   
  
Even if one day she may end up like nothing more than a corpse, to be picked clean by butterflies she would still remain faithful. As long as Atua was with her, she felt no fear.   
  
She was bombarded by even more temptations, every day a trial to prove her purity.   
  
One day she saw children playing outside of the window of her temple. The unchosen and unwashed.They were kicking a ball around in the sand. If Atua could have chosen anyone to speak to she wondered if someone else could sit in this seat freeing her to go play with them.   
  
“Nyahahaha! They’re all so pitiful! Unclean! Stupid! I hope Atua punishes them for being so selfish!”   
  
She resisted the temptation again to be among normal people. Without her they would all become lost. A shepard could not abandon their flock. A sheep dog meant to guide the heard cannot leave once they realize there are no other dogs among them.  
  
She laughed with rapturous joy falling backwards onto the altar. The fabric of her robes overflowed, and she embraced herself to hold on tighter to the light inside of her.   
  
“Oh well, I’m better off alone. It will make Atua’s voice clearer. I’ll make all the pitiful people of this island happy and help them. That’s why I was born.”

The myth of Yonaga Angie was a cyclical one, her life was a circle, she was born in this temple and one day it would become her coffin.   
  
  
  
🦔

 

Angie looked cluelessly at Medaka’s face in front of her. No matter how many waves of emotion broke against her shore, Angie did not budge at all. “There’s no need to be sad. That corpse, yes, it must have been turned into art.”   
  
“H-how could that possibly be art?”   
  
“I am Atua’s artist, he takes over my body to send messages. Life is art, and therefore it’s meaningful. Death is art, so that has meaning too. Yeah, yeah, I think I’m preaching something really good right now.”   
  
“You just admitted you were preaching.”   
  
“I’m curious about you…” Angie stepped forward and got far too close to Medaka’s face. Medaka was not usually the type to mind, but there was something off about Angie she could not quite place. “I sense tremendous talent inside of you, were you chosen by Atua too?”   
  
“No, not at all…?”   
  
“If you weren’t chosen by God, then how can you be so talented? Hey, how do you do it? How do you do it without Atua?” Angie said, swaying back and forth in a carefree manner again.

 

“I… I don’t know.”  
  
“I see you’re very lost.”   
  
“I’m not lost. I’m looking for my friend actually-”   
  
“Oh, Atua can tell you where she is.” Suddenly, without asking Angie reached forward and grabbed Medaka by the face pulling her against her breast. She stroked Medaka’s hair as if to calm her, but the entire thing was so forced it only made Medaka more anxious. “I can’t help but feel fascinated by you, so I’ve decided I’ll help you. You’re the raven haired, crimson eyed black god after all.”   
  
Her name was Kurokami, and she did have red eyes and dark hair, but Medaka only felt more and more of that uncomfortable feeling. She finally realized why. She did not want to be worshipped. She did not want to be isolated. She did not want to be put back into her coffin.   
  
Most of all she never wanted to be called a god. That would make her the exact opposite of a human being. She blinked her eyes and suddenly noticed, she was crying into Angie’s chest.

 

She was reminded of an unpleasant memory. The Kurokami Medaka convinced she was helping others, when really she did not understand their needs at all. The one who looked down on everyone around her like she was a saint, or a god in heaven.   
  
It filled her with ugly, unpleasant, shameful emotions she did not want to look at, so her eyes filled up with tears and her vision blurred.   
  
“Why do you have so many noisy emotions?” Angie asked. “For a strong girl you sure are a crybaby?”

 

Why was she able to cry like this?  
What part of her made her human?   
  
That day that Zenkichi brought over the ball to play with her, they ended up playing a game of soccer in the garden. Their goal post was two trees a meter apart from each other. Zenkichi volunteered to be the goalie.   
  
She imitated a shot she had read about in one of her books, kicking the ball up into the air and then flipping back and using the momentum to kick the ball at Zenkichi. As she did the ball plowed into his stomach hard enough to make him cough blood.   
  
Medaka immediately got worried and called Zenkichi’s mother over. This was always happening, almost every time they played Zenkichi got hurt. Ever since the first time he met when he came down with fever. She made him cry more times than she could count.   
  
She could care less about the many adults who lost interest with her and left her. The idea of Zenkichi ever starting to hate her, was the end of her world. She saw that she was crying, and ran over to his side.   
  
Her eyes were as empty as ever.   
  
“I’m not crying.”   
  
“Huh, but you obviously are? It’s a normal response. Pain is a signal that something is wrong with the body, and it also uses several hormones involved with crying.”   
  
“I said I’m not crying! Hitting me with that ball didn’t hurt me at all!”

  
“That’s not true. I didn’t know you were old enough to lie yet, I read in a book somewhere that children don’t develop enough of an ego to lie until they’re around four years old.”

  
“I’m not gonna cry! This doesn’t hurt at all.”   
  
“I think I broke one of your ribs. A child only has twelve pairs of ribs, the same as an adult, and if I break one you might have developmental problems as you grow.”   
  
“Stupid Medaka-chan! I already told myself I’m not going to cry anymore. I’m going to grow into a man who never cries, because the person who wants to cry the most of all is Medaka-chan!”

 

“Huh? Me? I think I probably lack the hormones in the brain necessary for the chemical reaction that leads to crying. I don’t remember ever-”  
  
“That’s not true. The first day we met you cried in front of me. Medaka-chan is the one who wants to cry most of all, so from now on cry whenever you want okay? I’ll be strong for the both of us.”   
  
_All of those adults never cared about my feelings, but Zenkichi does._

 _Ah, I see._ _  
_ _It’s not that I was incapable of feeling._

 _I just didn’t feel things when I was around them._ _  
_ _I don’t want to live the way all the adults tell me to._ _  
_ _I want to live the way you do, Zenkichi._

Kurokami Medaka chose the opposite path of Junko, who was able to portray any emotion she wanted to, and wear any face. The girl who seemed to embody beauty, and at the same time had no face at all.   
  
She became obsessed with the opposite path, with finding her own face.   
Even if she had to look in others to find it.

All so one day she could smile at Zenkichi, and know it was her true smile.  
One day she could cry, and be held by him.

“I want to see him again…” Medaka murmured.   
I want to see Zenkichi. I want to see Zenkichi. I want to see Zenkichi. I want to see Zenkichi.   
She thought about wanting to see Zenkichi. She filled her head with thoughts of wanting to see Zenkichi.   
  
“Huh? I thought you were looking for a girl. Well whatever.” Angie said, rudely shoving her away like she had just lost interest. “Follow me. If we find them, then Atua will want us to have reunited. If we don’t find them, then I guess Atua never wants us to see them again.”   
  
Medaka looked back to Sonia and Gundham who had equally no idea where to go, following Angie or at least investigating who had left this body here seemed like a path forward. Her eyes narrowed for a moment like a lioness about to strike. “Take this seriously. We have to find Shiranui, she’ll be lonely otherwise.”   
  
“Nobody’s really lonely are they?” Angie said, her eyes as pale and empty as death, “Not as long as they have Atua.”


	13. I Want to Connect, but I can't Express It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a Sarazanmai reference.

Tanaka still remembered the distant look in his mother’s eyes. Even when she looked at his face, he never once saw himself reflected in her eyes. He could tell she was searching for the features of another person in his face. 

 

Children pay far more attention to their parents than their parents ever realize. From a young age he realized there was something subtly off about his mother. She never held his hand when they were walking together. She never came to wake him up out of bed. Often the first noise he heard in the morning was her sigh upon seeing him.    
  
He started to feel as if something was broken within his mother. When his father left, he took a piece of her that she could never get back. As much as she wanted to be a whole person, all she could do was mourn her missing piece.    
  
His mother was probably incapable of showing her love. His father had snatched away her love when he left after all. All of that love belonged to that man now, even though he had never wanted it in the first place. Even if she wanted to say, the words just would not come out. That was what Gundham thought of her. 

  
The person she wanted to see the most was not here. Instead, there was only a small person who could cling onto her and cry. Gundham tried to understand why she would not even want to touch him. After all he too, wanted a mother who would hold him, not the frail woman who always gripped his face and then started to cry and demand he comfort her. 

 

His mother was simply too fragile. She said the words “I Love You” once with all of her being, only for those words to be tossed away like they were nothing. When she was tossed away, she shattered like glass. If she ever tried to say those words again, the weight would probably be too much for her. She was too afraid of loving again and breaking again.   
  
He understood it was too difficult for her to act like a mother. That was why, every time she prepared a meal for him he appreciated it from the bottom of his heart. It was the only motherly thing she ever did for him. When he saw her standing at the stove looking someplace distant, he wondered if this was the only way she could not express the words she could not say.    
  
The moment words were spoken they became dramatized.    
Words were unreliable.    
He did not need to hear those words from his mother.    
Anybody capable of saying those words could betray you.    
  
When he was a child he felt guilty. Perhaps, if she had been born with a better son, that son could love her enough to heal the wounds that his father had left. He felt resentful too. He was never good enough. He was always with her, and would never abandon her like his father had.    
No matter what he did. No matter how much he ate her poisonous food. His mother never stopped crying. His mother loved that bastard far more than she ever did him. 

Ever since he was young, when Tanaka saw people crying in front of him he always froze up.  _ Truly, I must have a heart made of ice  _ he thought to himself.    
  
“Have we finished preparations Lady Cat?”   
  
“Yessir, the paint-I mean the cursed blood is ready. Want to see?” Sonia held up a paint can she borrowed (took without permission because she was a princess) from the arts department.    
  
Generally Ultimates were allowed to creatively express themselves as much as they liked, so they could get away with a lot on school grounds.Even among the eccentrics, Gundham was known as a delinquent who only kept to himself. Gundham had come up with this plan, and he named Sonia his partner in crime. “Hahaha! Yes! This will do nicely!” Gundham took the brush in hand and sloppily splashed red across the ground like a stain of blood. “Let us begin the demon summoning!”    
  
“Yay!”    
  
The two of them together copied a pentagram based summoning circle that Gundham had printed out from the internet. They painted it right in the middle of the central plaza where everyone walked. Due to the fact that it was night, nobody was there to catch them.    
  
“Make sure everything is neat, Lady Cat! If we make a mistake, the powers of the demon will rebound to us tenfold.”    
  
“I won’t!” 

  
It was Sonia’s planning and preparation that allowed them to use a 9x9 grid to draw the summoning circle to larger scale. The only thing Gundham had done was google ‘how to summon a demon’. Under cover of darkness, Gundham felt no fear at all being together like this. He delighted that Sonia, polite and kind to everyone, showed only him her wickedness.    
  
The two of them waited for the paint to dry them removed the tape from the ground. They sat in the middle of the circle waiting for something to happen. “If only we had virgin blood, the demon would come.”   
  
“Well, whose fault is it that neither of us are a virgin?” Sonia for such a polite girl, was surprisingly frank.    
  
“Uhhh…” Gundham changed the subject.   
  
The two of them went to the campus store that was always running, and bought all the candy they could carry between the two of them. They threw out all the offerings in the middle of the circle for the demon to take. 

“Throw him our sacrfices!” 

 

“Chocolate for Mr. Demon! Nutty caramel goodness!”    
  
They laid together in the center of the circle once more. When Sonia started to get cold, Gundham gave her his uniform jacket without thinking much of it. She was a high enough level to equip it anyway. Her skin was especially pale in the moonlight, as she shivered while clutching his jacket draped over her shoulders.    
  
When no demon came still, Sonia began to pick up the candy they left lying around and unwrap it. She took a bite out of half of it, and then offered the other half to Gundham. He ate it without thinking, princesses probably were not allowed to eat too many sweets after all. 

 

“It would seem the demon is busy again today. Do not worry, we can try again tomorrow.”   
  
“Tomorrow…?” As she said those words, the princess’s face broke. Ever since he was a young age, Tanaka could detect that instant when a person’s expression fell off, and the tears would not stop falling. To him, it was like hearing the sound of shattering glass. He tried so hard to get good at reading his mother so he would not make her cry any more. Princess wore her face for the sake of others, a kind face, it fell off as she cried ugly selfish tears. She balled her hands up and tried to cover her eyes, so Tanaka would not see the snot on her already wet face. “Right… T-tomorrow!” 

 

“L-lady cat! We don’t need to wait until tomorrow! L-let’s do another one right now!” 

 

“I-It is not that, Tanaka-san…”

  
“What do you…?”    
  
“I have to go back to Novoselic. They promised me I could have two years of freedom if I devoted the rest of my life to them I… still have not made… not one single friend…” 

  
He heard her gasping for breath as she tried to speak as if she were drowning. Once again there was someone crying right in front of him, and he felt a sensation of his skin freezing over. Sonia only wanted a little bit of happiness for herself. She lived her life in devotion to others, but all they did was take more, and more, and more of her.    
  
She never asked to be a princess. She never asked to have money and status. She never wanted to rule over others. He reached up and tugged at her sleeve pulling her hand away. Her face had completely fallen apart due to sadness.    
  
  


Tanaka still thought it was beautiful.   
He always hated his own face, because due to genetics it was half of his father’s and half of his mother’s. He thought Sonia’s parents were loathsome people as well. Sonia who always smiled around others, was always crying around him because of them.    
Even though her face was genetically half her mother’s and half her father’s, it was still her own.    
Therefore it was beautiful.    
He contemplated how such a genetically perfect face could exist.   
Shaped as if it was meant to make his heart flutter this way just at the sight.    
He imagined what it would be like to kiss that face and taste her tears.    
  
“Tanaka-san, could you kiss me just once before I leave?” She said, as if reading his thoughts and seeing the affection for her in his eyes.    
  
“Princesses can’t bite poison apples.”    
  
As he stared Sonia closed the distance between them. She held onto him and buried her face in his scarf. Sonia just wanted someone to comfort her. To tell her to be strong. He knew that and yet, when he reached his hand to her he pushed her away harshly. “You spoiled brat! You have a home to return to! You are adored by everyone! And yet, you cry! You cry in front of the son of an angel and a devil, a cursed being shunned and rejected by this world!” 

 

Sonia finally touched her face. She looked around for a moment, as if she were looking for the pieces that had fallen away so she could put them back together. Then, she showed Gundham the same smile that everyone else saw. “I… I’m sorry Tanaka-san. I forgot that you don’t like to be touched because your skin is poison.” 

She left him alone and returned to her dorm. If he had been able to say those words, she might have been saved.  _ I want to be tied to you. I want some special fate to have led to our meeting. I want to remember that we were actually childhood friends all along who simply forgot about each other. I want to be revealed as the bastard son of some noble family so it's alright for me to marry you. I want the string connecting us to never break no matter how far we're pulled apart.  _ He wondered why all those words were so hard to say, even when they filled his head constantly every time he was around her.    
  
Tanaka sat in the center of his circle. From behind, he felt acryllic nails rake across his skin.    
  
“It looks like the demon I summoned came after all.”   
  
“Boo hoo! Senpai, you’re so mean to me!”    
  
“Why are you always bothering me, poisonous woman?”

“I just think my upperclassmen are the coolest set of peeps. I really admire them…” That woman’s voice intensified as her hands held his face from behind. “W-will you notice me senpai?”    
  
“No.”   
  
“Well, I’ve noticed something. It’s just like your mother again, isn’t it? No matter what, you’re still a powerless child who can’t do a single thing to stop the woman in front of you from crying.”    
  
“...”   
  


“You totally look like one of those guys who’s like, ‘I would do anything to make the person I love happy’, but it’s not like that right? After all, you could have said something to make her smile right now.”    
  
“You understand nothing. I’m in isolation for a reason.”    
  
“If you were in isolation, you wouldn’t be sneaking away with her in the middle of the night, silly!” She said, dragging her tongue across his face as if she were an animal licking him. “Unable to go to the side of people you can’t stand or the outside world, your princess was sleeping there with no one in this world besides you. You knew how lonely she was, and yet for all her fragility, in some respects those peaceful days were perfection.”    
  
“What are you saying? Stop speaking in such a confusing way just to sound cool!”   
  
“You don’t want her to be happy. You want someone to be miserable with. Let’s break her together, senpai! Just like your mother, if you steal her heart and put it in a box, she’ll never stop loving you.” 

 

There was once a princess. She showed everyone a kind, gentle smile. They all thought she was looking down on them, so they ostracized her and threw stones. 

  
When she became an outcast, she found a person who was similarly shunned. She thought he was a dark prince misunderstood by the world, that was why no matter what he did she accepted him and unflinchingly continued to love him.   
  
He knew, if he said those words to her. The magic words she had gone her whole life without hearing, the princess’s curse would be lifted. If he said those words, she would forgive all of him, even a poisonous existence like himself.    
  
He could not say them. The moment they left his lips, they would have turned into lies.    
  
The dark prince was nothing more than a scoundrel in the end. He could not kiss a single princess with such poisonous lips. He gave up on kisses. The only way he could express his love, was to cut her heart out in the end, and stuff it still beating into a box. 

 

🦔

  
“So, are you two a couple?” 

  
That was the thoughtless question of Kurokami Medaka that sparked such a memory in Tanaka.    
  
“Why do you always whisper to me? Unless you speak in the demon tongues, you won’t understand me.” Tanaka said, changing the subject.    
  
“Somehow, you are the most normal and easy to talk to person here.”    
  
“That is the worst thing you have ever said to me. I will never recover from this wound.”    
  
Medaka looked ahead and saw Angie and Sonia were both trying to lead the group. Due to the fact that they were always both smiling, it was difficult to tell whether they were getting along or not as they argued about which direction to go.    
  
She really wanted to learn about humans, but… every single human she had encountered so far turned out… like that. She wondered if the same way Enoshima Junko had a charisma that naturally attracted others, she had that same magnetic quality.    
  
She was a magnet who could only attract weirdos. Medaka quickly began rubbing the sides of her head messing up her hair in frustration. “Magnetism, magnetism, go away…”    
  
“What are you doing?”   
  
“Why do I keep running into all of these weird people?”    
  
“It’s probably because you’re a weirdo yourself.” 

  
“I see. You’re right. My self esteem which was already on the bottom of the sea floor has plummeted even lower.” Medaka had no idea that those were just the feelings of a normal teenager.    
  
Gundham clicked his teeth at that teenage girl who looked like she was about to cry again. “The princess is unaware of my feelings.”   
  
“What? How can that be when you’re so close?”   
  
“There are plenty of people who feast upon the carnal pleasures of the flesh without putting those feelings into words.”    
  
“You guys have done that? But you’re not even married yet.” Kurokami looked absolutely scandalized. She was an old fashioned kind of gal. So old fashioned she looked like she was about to collapse from the vapors. “I-is that even allowed?” She said in barely a whisper. 

“If the words you want to say would only hurt her, then they are best left unspoken.” 

  
“That might keep her from getting hurt but, being in a relationship where each person hides half of themselves, and only knows half of the other, sounds terribly sad.” 

  
Gundham stopped walking right then. He bit down hard on his tongue, until he could taste blood. He was used to the taste of his own poison at least. “Fool. Why are you trying to be kind, to someone like me?”    
  
“I want you to talk to animals for me and tell them not to be scared of me,” Medaka answered far too honestly.    
  
“What you ask is impossible for even a level nine demon.”    
  
“Huh?”    
  
“I cannot talk to animals, I only memorize their behavior patterns and observe them. If I could talk to animals, I wouldn’t like them.”   
  
“Why not?” Medaka kept asking questions, just like a curious child.    
  
“Anything that can talk will eventually betray you.”   
  
“Th-that’s not true, Senpai trusts you.”   
  
“It’s because she trusts me so easily that I will betray her before this game is over.”

 

Tanaka could not help but compare the aura he felt from Kurokami Medaka, to Enoshima Junko. Yet despite feeling a similar amount of crushing weight just standing next to them, Medaka was oddly innocent. That innocence would betray her too. 

 

Before they could continue whispering back and forth Angie and Sonia at the head of the group called for them.    
  
“Nyahahahaha! I found the girl you were looking for! I’ve done good, so praise Atua for me so I can earn points to upgrade my membership.”    
  
The person Angie pointed to was not a blue haired little girl, but rather a man taller than everybody else present who was so muscular that he stretched the pinstripe suit he was wearing to its absolute limits. Gundham noted that he looked even bigger than Nekomaru.    
  
“Gonta has no idea why two girls suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started pointing at him, but do not worry. Gonta is a gentleman, he exists to be of service to ladies!” 

 

The man had wild brown hair that fell past the end of his spine. He had piercing red eyes that looked like the kind a beast appearing in the dark would have. Yet, in contradiction of his wild appearance he was wearing a pinstripe suit and tie, and bookish round glasses. He looked a bit like tarzan shoved into a suit. As he held his finger out a butterfly landed on it. Gonta immediately smiled widely in surprise.    
  
“I don’t think that’s Shiranui, Shiranui is much smaller than that,” Medaka protested.   
  
“Maaaaybe she gained some weight,” Angie ignored her. “Well, Atua’s visions are flawless so your friend is probably already dead and Atua decided to introduce you to a new friend. Isn’t he so kind?” 

 

“That’s not kind at all!” 

 

“So the gods’ colossus returns from purgatory at dusk. What color will tonight’s moon run?” Gundham said, averting his eyes and looking away from the newcomer.    
  
“Huh? Oh, you mean what is Gonta walking around at night for? Gonta does not know either, it is a very philosophical question and Gentleman are supposed to be deep thinkers so Gonta wanted to ask someone else.” 

 

“Ah… So you were able to pierce the obfuscating veil of the Supreme Overlord of Ice.”   
  
“Actually, San-D tell Gonta.”   
  
“Wha-!? Are you saying you exchanged words of the soul with San-D, the Supernova Silver Fox?”    
  
“Hmmm, four hampsters live in your scarf. Can Gonta greet them too?”    
  
At that moment his four hamsters crawled out of his clothes and onto his shoulder. The snake that was wrapped around his leg hissed rather happily as well. Gundham looked on in confusion for a moment at what should have been impossible. “Kehehehe… I never thought you’d match the astral level of the four dark devas of destruction!” 

 

“How cute! Good morning, hamsters!” Gonta readjusted his glasses because he heard that was what smart people did when they wore glasses. “To be honest, your hamsters told me you are Gundham Tanaka. The author of the website Exciting Breeding Journal. You made a new crossbreed of beetle that Gonta is a huge fan of. Can Gonta call you bug brother?”    
  
Gundham sensed this person was getting too close. “No.”    
  
“Why not?”

“You are far too pure of heart. Only the evil and the wicked could sympathize with a soul such a mine.”    
  
“Huh, but you like bugs don’t you?”    
  
“Of course I do. All animals of the animal kingdom are under my domain of protection.”    
  
“B-but, nobody who likes bugs can be a bad person?” 

 

Thoughtlessly, Gonta tried to reach out and touch Gundham. Gundham’s flight or fight instincts activated and he ran away. Gonta, not really understanding chased him around for a little while. He really did just look like a well meaning fan. One too pure to understand Gundham’s various hangups when it came to other people. 

 

Sonia spoke up for him. “Umm, Tanaka-san is not used to people. If this were a drama he would be the classic broody loner who secretly helps out cats in the rain, and is all-together a heart throb.”    
  
Gonta looked like he only understood half of what she was saying. He stopped chasing around Gundham and averted his eyes like a child being scolded. “Oh… Gonta scary looking, huh?”    
  
“Oh, sorry. That’s not what I meant. Tanaka-san is afraid of everyone, even cute looking girls.”    
  
“The Dark Queen uses her cute face to hide her black magic. Never underestimate, her beauty is like that of a black widow.” 

  
“Hmm, but spiders are arachnids not insects.” Gonta went back to smiling. “No, is okay. Gonta used to it. Gonta called scary since he was a kid.”    
  
“Since you were a kid, huh?” Sonia could not help but be reminded of Tanaka, who tried to look scary on purpose in every available way.    
  
“Kid Gonta bigger than other kids. Other kids scared of Gonta. So kid Gonta play alone. That how Gonta come to like bugs. But when Gonta really focus it easy to lose track. One day, Gonta go to forest to find bugs, end up lost. If Gonta have friend to go searching for bugs for might not have happened...”    
  
“Oh dear, I hope they were able to find you right away.”   
  
“Yeah, took ten years though.”   
  
“Ten years!”    
  
“But Gonta fine… New family took care of Gonta.”   
  
“I hope those people were kind to you.”    
  
“Oh… not people, wolves. They teach Gonta to speak bug and animal.”    
  
Sonia’s eyes immediately went starry. “A feral child, I’ve heard of such a thing. Humans raised without nurturing parents truly do become beastial, the hidden wild side which everyone else represses.”    
  
“Ummm… Not sure what lady talking about. Gonta really nice person, going to become gentleman.” 

 

**Name:** Gokuhara Gonta   
**Talent:** Ultimate Entomologist   
**Mentality:** Abnormal   
**Likes:** Arthropods   
**Dislikes:** Bananas

 

Medaka started to whisper to Gundham again. “Wasn’t that your fantasy version of yourself when you were stuck in the neo world program dream?”   
  
“How have you seen the true colors of my soul?”   
  
“Oh. Kuji-nee told me.”    
  
“That traitor. The bandaged one and I swore an oath to only show our true faces to each other.” 

 

“You’re really shy, just like Kuji-nee said.”    
  
Gundham hissed at her, trying to make her go away like a cornered animal would. It had no effect. 

 

Gonta and Sonia’s conversation resumed. “A princess! Does that mean, your heart belongs to true gentleman?” 

 

Sonia put her hand on her breast. She looked at Gundham hissing like a cat that someone had just dunked in water, and then with a sweet smile nodded her head. “Something like that. All members of royalty require knowledge of manners.”    
  
“Gonta could learn lots of being gentleman from princess like Sonia. Gonta study and practice every day, but no good at manners even though Gonta plenty manly.” 

  
“Of course formalities are essential, but the most important quality is one’s heart.”    
  
“Huh?”   
  
“Being considerate towards others is the core of manners. In that respect, I believe you have mastered the basics.”    
  
“R-really?”   
  
“Indeed. You will acquire knowledge in time, so please treasure your gentlemanly heart.”    
  
“Thank you! Gonta so happy that graceful Sonia accept him as a gentleman!” Immediately he took her up in his arms and spun her around without thinking. 

  
Tanaka watched on, suddenly dropping his attitudes towards Medaka. His entire face went blank. Someone who was so easily able to speak from the heart. That kind of pure person lacking any poison. No ill intentions at all as if they did not even have a shadow.    
  
He was sure, it was only because he was kept away from human society for so long. Tanaka, like an animal grinded his teeth. He felt the snake he kept on him wrap tighter and tighter as it slithered up his body and coiled itself around his neck. 

  
He sunk his canines into his teeth so hard that he started to bleed again. That kind of pure person would never hurt Sonia as he had. That was why he was able to embrace her so easily, draw close to her so thoughtlessly. He did not have to worry about who he would poison.    
  
Suddenly then, the group heard another explosion.    
Another random encounter, as the bears came pouring out from the alleyways. Tanaka wished he had a much larger animal to command and fight with as he held out his forearm and let the snake wrap himself around it.    
  
Just then Gonta still holding onto Sonia lifted her into the air like a princess. “Not sure Gonta much help, but Gonta will protect!” 

  
Gonta jumped into the air, and crashed on the first bear he saw while still cradling Sonia in his arms. The bear crumpled underneath his strength. Gundham estimated that with his massive body, Gonta may at least be as strong as Sakura Oogami and Kurokami Medaka. Strong enough that his promise to protect others were no mere words.    
  
Words.    
All he could do was babble on about nonsense.    
No wonder he could not stop one single person from crying in front of him.

A bear lunged at him and Tanaka did not even move. Medaka stepped in front of him, and punched it shattering it to pieces in the air. If he had been the one who broke Tanaka would not have minded too much.    
  
Suddenly, with Gonta and Medaka’s resistance the bears turned away and ran. Medaka stopped for a moment confused, picking up that something was off. “They’re robots… there’s no way they can be scared. Why are they running?”    
  
“Who cares? Fighting toys is no fun. I don’t want to put effort into things.” Angie yawned. “If you all want to die protecting someone important like me that’s fine, Atua would approve.”    
  
Gonta put Sonia down, happily smiling because he had been useful and kept his word to protect her. Sonia walked over to Gundham, touching his scarf and wrapping it back around his face for him as it had gotten disheveled. As she finished the final loop around his head, indirectly through the fabric of his scarf she put a finger on his lips.    
  
“Princess, do you see now I'm useless, a failure of a knight.”    
  
“What if I want you anyway?”   
  
Tanaka tightened his fist so much he tore the bandages wrapped around his hand.    
_ I…  _ _   
_ _ I want you to hate me. _   
_ I destroyed you…  _ _   
_ _ Even though I had loved you at the time.  _ _   
_ _ And yet… _ _   
_ _ I can’t stand the idea that someone else would be better suited for you than me.  _ _   
_ _ I really am the worst.  _   
  
“You can’t get everything you want. You’ll grow rotten.”   
  
Sonia’s face started to break again. He felt it, like a small piece of her face had fallen off and gotten lost. “There’s a difference between being tsundere, and just saying things to be hurtful you know. I hate when you act this way!” 

  
Sonia raised her voice high enough to shatter glass. He was used to seeing people fall apart. He had only ever known broken people. Even Sonia became like that as a result of knowing him.  He cracked an evil looking smile.  _ Do you hate me now? I should be happy. _   
  
Gundham tried to turn away like he always did. Gonta stepped between them and grabbed Gundham by the shoulder. “You no make princess sad. Bug brother likes bugs. Bug brother has to be good person.”    
  


“Don’t touch me.” Gundham gave a low growl, before back handing Gonta’s hand away. “What do you know? What does an idiot like you know anything at all about how hard it is being human?” 

  
“That’s right…” Gonta repeated in a quiet voice. “Gonta doesn’t know.” 

 

🦔

 

**Gonta’s Rules to Being a Gentleman.** **  
** **Always follow these rules or you’ll make that person cry again.**

 

**Rule number one.** **  
** **Always make eye contact with others.**

 

Gonta kept his head down. When he returned home, he thought his family would run and embrace him. Even though it had been ten years, he never once forgot about them. He wanted to apologize for getting lost. He wanted to tell them that he dreamed of returning home every night. That they all cried over him. The kind of happy ending that happened at the end of stories his mother used to read him.    
  
His body had grown but his mind had not. He felt like he was that same five year old kid who disappeared ten years ago. In all that time he never stopped being that kid. So, every night he missed his mother. He cried thinking of her, even though there were wolves that took care of him and fed him. He wanted to make her smile again just so he could see her smile.    
  
When he returned home the first thing his mother did was scream at him. “That’s not my son! That thing isn’t my son anymore!”    
  
The adults told him that every night his mother prayed and prayed for him to come back home. Finally, after ten years a miracle had happened and the first thing Gonta had done was made her upset. Gonta hung his head feeling bad about himself. He wanted to cry too, but he was sure mother was already crying. His father was a very important man, and head of the family so he did not scream like mother did. Instead, he looked and spoke in stern words. He explained to Gonta, the way he was acting was improper. “They all think you’re dangerous, that you’ve gone feral. It can’t be helped though, you were away from us for so long.” His father’s words were an empty comfort.    
  
They were still family. Gonta thought they would accept him. As he looked around the room, he noticed they were all looking at him like he was not a human. He kept his eyes on the floor, because he was scared to see what his own family thought of him.    
  
**Rule number two.** **  
** **Never make a girl cry.**

His father explained to him again that he was forbidden from seeing his mother. That she had some kind of ‘men-tell breakdown’. Gonta asked his father if she was broken, then he wanted to help fix her.    
  
“You’re the reason she’s broken in the first place.”    
  
She spent everyday waiting for her son to come back. When he finally did, there was not a trace of the sweet boy she had known in him anymore. She could not recognize her own son. She hurled insults at him and accused him of being an imposter. Because of that, the mind of Gonta’s mother slowly broke.    
  
She locked herself in her room from everybody else. Even though his father warned him not to, Gonta stood in front of the door. He heard the sounds of her crying from within. If only his mother knew, he could not stand to see her crying. He would do anything to stop her from crying. 

 

“You think I’m a terrible mother, don’t you?” 

  
“What…? No, Gonta no-”   
  
“You think it’s my fault for abandoning you for ten years! That’s why you’ve come back to punish me!”    
  
Gonta was looking for his family all this time.   
He finally found them, and it ended up like this.   
He heard glass shatter at the other side of the door. Gonta tore the door open, to see that this mother had broken her mirror and grabbed one of the glass shards to hurt herself with. Gonta ran forward and grabbed it out of her hand. It hurt to do that, but Gonta forgave her because he was strong. This strength was so that he would get hurt instead of his weak mother.    
  
When Gonta’s father found him holding his mother back from hurting herself, he lectured Gonta for making her worse again. 

 

**Rule number three.** **  
** **Dress to impress.**

 

Gonta found the suit incredibly itchy. His father said it was his fault that his mother had fallen into such a state. If he learned to act more human, he knew she would recover. He asked the maids to help him for a fitting.    
  
Even though his eyes worked perfectly well he wore glasses to look smarter. He learned how to tie the knot of a tie, by practicing it over and over again. He knew he was a slow learner that was why he had to try harder than everybody else. 

He would make them acknowledge him as a human. If he went back to the way he was before he had gotten lost, if he became a boy again, maybe his mother would recognize him this time. He missed the smile she used to show him so freely when he was younger. 

  
Gonta sat still the whole time as the servants kindly taught him how to put the individual parts of the suit on. He got used to wearing them. Just as he when listening to the servants, learned to read slightly better than his five year old self who had disappeared. Sometimes Gonta wondered why his parents did not want to teach him these things, but he decided not to take it too personally. It was his fault for disappearing on them for ten years, they never got the chance to be parents. They probably did not know how to act just like him.    
  
“Gonta will become true gentleman. Gonta read all the books on it. Gonta want to go back to school now.”    
  
Gonta told his father one day.    
Fathers were supposed to pat their sons on the head when they were proud of him. When he was much younger, he remembered once reading a book out loud in his father’s head and being quietly patted on the head.   
He wondered what the difference was between then and now.    
  
“You’ll only make things worse if you go outside.” His father said in a cold voice. “You’re just an embarrassment now. Stay inside the mansion, until I find some better place to hide you away for the rest of your life.”   
  
Gonta heard his father’s words.    
It was like he had said.   
_ It would be better for us if you had never been found.  _ _   
_ _   
_ Gonta thought it was his fault. He was not smart enough to say the right words.   
If he could only learn them he would know.   
How to tell his father and mother, all he wanted was to be their son again. 

 

🦔

 

Medaka turned around suddenly. She saw Hinata and Munakata in the distance, fighting. “Those two, what are they doing?” Because they had caught her eye, she was not paying attention.    
  
Gundham looking away from everyone noticed Towa Tower in the center of the city. He saw a small light, as if it was being reflected by a handheld mirror on the top of that tower. That glimmer was all he needed to know what was happening. 

  
  


“You always do this! If you hate me, then don’t occasionally be kind to me only to push me away! Don’t lead me on! I don’t have any friends, so why me?”   
  
“I’m only after your family’s money.”   
  
“That’s a lie.”   
  
“I was only using you for your body.”   
  
“That’s a lie too! I hate when you lie! Maybe the reason everyone betrays you in the end is because you deserve it for acting that way!”    
  
All of them at once heard a sound loud enough to split the air. The only one to move was Gundham, rushing forward and with a bandaged hand pushing Sonia out of the way. Hot lead hit him, and his shoulder exploded from the wound as he collapsed on top of Sonia.    
  
Gundham punched the ground and got up. He stood over her so no more bullets would hit her. He took a few shaky footsteps forward. Pink already had fallen down his arm and stained his bandages. It dripped onto road with each step.    
  
He heard the sound of raindrops.    
No, it was just falling blood.    
He made it only a few steps before collapsing again.    
  
“It’s so damn hard…”    
  
“Tanaka-san.”   
  
“Hey, why can’t I hate you?”    
  
Medaka looked in horror, another person she failed to save in front of her. She looked back to Hinata fighting Munakata in the distance.    
  
“Tanaka-san. We have to find Tanaka-san medical help.”    
  
“But… Hinata…” She still had not apologized for picking a fight with him. 

  
“You cannot save everyone.”   
  
“You said a princess exists to be in service of everyone.”   
  
“Yes, but saving everyone is impossible. That’s why a princess exists as an ideal, to be crushed over, and over, and over again by reality. That’s all we can look forward to in life.” 

 

_ Ah.  _   
_ How hopeless.  _   
Medaka thought. 

  
  
  
  



	14. Tower of Beloved Corpses

“The kamukura project. Do you feel any regret at all, trying to frankenstein a deus ex machina like this, Neurologist?”  
  
His words cut straight through everything. Munakata Kyosuke stood high on the steel beams, perfectly in balance. He ignored Kamukura like he was just some ‘thing’ and instead spoke to the one responsible for his existence.  
  
Unlike the proud, pure white, stainless steel visage of Kyosuke, Matsuda needed to brush his shaggy dark hair away from his face to get a proper look. As always he wore a ‘done with it all’ expression on his tired looking face. “Pft. How long have you been waiting to use that line exactly?” 

 

Yasuke only saw the light reflecting off the knife as it was thrown through the air. In a clumsy motion he jerked his head back. The knife scratched his face leaving a trail of red and then embedded in the wall behind him.  
  
“What kind of person just throws sharp objects at something without warning! You’re a fucking psycho! And not the cute kind either!”  
  
Well Yasuke had a habit of throwing scalpels at both Junko and Kumagawa but he did not consider himself a role model.  
  
Munakata recoiled his hand from having tossed the throwing knife. “Do you understand what you’ve done? You made a clockwork god, a hope that will do whatever it's told. Imagine a creature with every known talent at its disposal. Human civilization will be brought down to its knees because of this. He’s monstrous. A WMD waiting to be misused.”  
  
“Hey, he can hear you, you know. That monster you’re so afraid of is the type who cares far too much about what other people think.”  
  
“Hope itself will collapse into a singularity. Disappear. All that will be left is misery and despair. Don’t you feel regret for creating him?” 

  
Matsuda looked at Kamukura, still like a beautiful statue watching with those eyes of his as always. Matsuda always hated being caught in that red stare. No matter how many times he operated on him, no matter how many times he locked him away in that room, Kamukura always just kept staring at him with those red eyes.  
  
It was like a little brat, clinging and crying to the parent who beat them. Going sorry, sorry, I’m sorry for making you hit me mommy, because they don’t know any better. 

  
“I’m the opposite type. I don’t care what other people think at all. Do you want me to regret that guy? No thanks. I’ve already got way too many regrets of my own.” 

 

Munakata fixed two hands around the hilt of his sword.  
  
Before he could move, Hinata finally stepped forward and between the two of them. “Matsuda, get out of here. You’re useless to me now.”  
  
“Yeah, like I wanted to stick around to watch you two yell at each other about hope and despair anyway, I already got enough of that from Junko and Komaeda for one lifetime.” Matsuda said as he took off running for the stairway. Munakata tried to throw another of the knives he kept on the inside of his suit jacket, but Kamukura caught it in the air with his hand.  
  
Juzo punched the ground to force himself to stand up. If he was just a little bit stronger, he could stand up right now and fight beside Munakata. That was all he ever wanted. He thought if he could fight by Munakata’s side, together with him, then even his useless talent might become worth something.  
  
He stood on his feet looking like a corpse stepping out of a grave. His bones screamed with the effort, but he grit his teeth and ignored it. If he could not be good for anything else, he could at least learn to ignore the pain in his heart. “Munakata!”

 

Even when he cried out the name of the person most precious to him, Munakata did not turn his back. He kept his steely gaze on Hinata the entire time. “Don’t get involved.”  
  
“Screw that!”  
  
“I’ll handle it.”  
  
“Come on!”  
  
“Wanna help, follow Matsuda.”  
  
“Yeah, fine.” He dragged his haggard body to the steps. If all he could do for Munakata at the moment was hunt Matsuda like a dog, then he would do it. 

 

Munakata rushed across the classroom slicing through the air in a wide arc. His swing was so perfect the light reflecting from the tip of his sword blurred and left the trail of a pure white crescent in the air.  
  
Kamukura picked the pipe up off the ground and blocked that strike. He wondered how long Munakata had practiced swinging his sword over and over again striving for perfection. He was truly jealous of that effort, from the bottom of his heart. A sick smile spread across his lips reminiscent of Enoshima Junko. “What are you giving me such a steely gaze for? If we’re going to meaningless slaughter each other, you should at least look like you’re having fun.” 

Munakata swung back his sword, and then aimed his next swing for Kamukura’s head. Kamukura dodged easily not a single hair being cut. His black hair trailing behind him as he swung his body around and aimed a kick. He was looking to take Munakata down in one blow, to destroy all his hard work and make it nothing. 

  
Munakata surpassed his expectations and dodged out of the way. No, he analyzed Munakata perfectly when he was fighting Medaka earlier, there was no way his body should be capable of moving that fast. Before he had time to think about it Munakata stabbed the air where his head had been a moment ago.  
  
He stepped back, dodging several stabs in succession. Munakata unable to hit him with his strong swings, was now going for chaining so many blows and not letting up that it became impossible to dodge. Kamukura flawlessly dodged all of them, until he felt the edge of Munakata’s blade rip through his shoulder and tear his suit.  
  
No.  
This should not be possible.  
Life was not like a shonen manga, characters did not suddenly receive unexpected power ups when they were facing an impossibly strong foe.  
  
Kamukura wondered when the last time he had fought like this was. He fought with everything he had against Iihiko, but they were too perfectly evenly matched, it was like trying to defeat his reflection on the other side of the mirror. That time in the virtual world Kumagawa really did want to provoke Kamukura into killing him he was sure. Medaka and him fought twice, and they were completely tied. 

 

 _Kurokami aren’t we supposed to be the strongest? Why does it seem lately… that we can’t protect a single thing._  
  
Kamukura retreated, jumping off of the ledge and landing on the grid of iron bars. Munakata gave chase, not willing to let him go that easily. Kamukura remembered the mission that had been flashed across the screen of that television near where he first woke up. He rushed towards the tower in the center of the city.  
  
Towa tower looked like several shrines stacked up on each other and twisted. Inside, the shape of the lobby was triangular and Kamukura saw as he ascended floors that the interior began to resemble a mazelike structure.  
  
Munakata cut him off a few stories up. Kamukura deduced that Munakata was the exact same kind of student council president that Kurokami Medaka had been, he considered it his duty to be the strongest and smartest in the entire school for the sake of helping others. He dashed forward and brought his sword down, aiming for Kamukura’s shoulder. Kamukura dodged again, but just barely. 

“Running won’t make a difference. I already swore, anyone who made Yukizome cry, I would destroy all of them until not a single one was left.” 

 

“Why is it feelings of love always become so violent? How boring.” Kamukura closed one eye focusing only with his red one. “It’s meaningless, I won’t fight you.”  
  
“Don’t suddenly pretend to have free will, God of the Machine.”  
  
“Komaeda Nagito, even when he was bound and gagged in a murderer’s basement saw your graduation speech on TV. You gave him hope. If you were to die, he would lose hope.”  
  
“What do you know about hope?”  
  
“Young Hope, Munakata Kyosuke. The Ultimate Hope is me, and not you, isn’t it? What hope do you expect to gain by killing others? There’s no hope, and no despair in death, it’s just nothing, the loss of all futures.”  
  
“Hope requires sacrifices. Isn’t that what that boy was always saying?”  
  
As Munakata stood there holding his sword.  
Kamukura saw his pure white image eclipsed.  
Komaeda stood right there in Munakata’s shoes.  
If Munakata was hope that would make him despair again.  
Kamukura could never escape the past.  
Not as long as he lived inside of this body.  
His rib cage was just a prison for his mechanical heart.  
  
“So naive, and so cynical at the same time. Then, is Juzo just one of those sacrifices too?”

 

Munakata suddenly rushed forward again with more speed then Kamukura expected. His cool looks melted away to reveal the wrath underneath. Munakata stopped swinging in such beautiful arcs, and instead cut apart whatever was in front of him like he was in a frenzy. Kamukura saw his eyes change, Munakata’s round silver eyes contracted as all color disappeared from them and his pupils became narrow slits.  
  
“Juzo doesn’t belong to you,” Munakata his voice straining in emotion.  
  
Kamukura raised the pipe above his head to block, judging that to be the best move. Munakata did something unexpected again, he kept smashing his sword down on the pipe wielding it like he was just trying to break something.  
  
“You’re not allowed to look at him. You’re not allowed to touch him. Someone like you can’t say a single word about him.”

Munakata cut straight through the pipe. Kamukura reached to grab the edge of the sword with his hand, but his hand was just mangled underneath the weight of Munakata’s blow. 

  
“Someone like me?”  
  
“You don’t feel anything do you. We’ve been fighting this entire time and your face never changed once. People born into this word can feel joy, sadness, anger and other emotions so strongly they tremble, but that’s all a mystery to you, right?” Those sharp eyes of Munakata’s, cut right through him. “But you’re smart enough to make up for it by lying. You can only pretend to be happy, or have fun, or be sad, so you won’t reveal your empty heart.”  
  
“My friends…”  
  
“You want others around you, enjoying happy things, having fun times, facing difficult and painful things together, but when they’re close it’s so obvious to you. Their souls are dyed so many colors, and you’re just an empty shell. A ridiculous joke. Why… were you even born?”

Munakata kicked his legs out from underneath him. Kamukura collapsed to the floor with Munakata standing over him. He felt something tighten around his neck. Munakata grabbed him by the tie and dragged him up.  
  
“I was born because, I also saw you make that speech that day. I came to Hope’s Peak, because I wanted to become a person like you.” Hinata said, speaking from the heart. That is, if he even had a heart. “That’s why I signed up for the Kamukura project. You think I don’t know that I’m the reason all of this happened? I’m not such a halfass that I’d try to dodge responsibility.”  
  
“No, it’s not your fault.”  
  
“...?”  
  
“Rather, it’s not the fault of the boy Hinata Hajime. He was used by the school you admired so much, and turned into a machine for the board of trustees. I’m truly sorry for what happened to him, he’s another person I failed to save.”  
  
“Hinata Hajime is the person you’re talking to right now, dipshit! The half-assed existence of Kamukura Izuru, and the half-assed existence of Hinata Hajime. Together, the two of us make a full ass.”

 

 _What the hell am I saying?_ Hinata screamed inside his own head.  
  
“You truly do not know? I feel sorry for you.” 

“Stop suddenly being nice! I preferred it when you were trying to kill me! Kind words just sound like garbage coming out of your mouth! My memories were erased but I gave up everything to take back that part of myself!” 

 

“Your memories were erased? No such order was given by the Hope’s Board of Trustees. Rather, Hinata Hajime died as a result of too many successive surgeries. He experienced complete and total brain death. You are the existence that was born inside of his corpse.”  
  
“...?”  
  
“Who would have erased your memories? Matsuda Yasuke had not perfected his own memory erasing techniques yet, when he tried such a thing on Enoshima Junko to cover up her crimes it was flawed, and required Enoshima Junko’s analysis to perfect the procedure.”  
  
“No, these memories are mine. I took them back. I promised her I wouldn’t run away anymore, not from anyone, not from myself!”  
  
“You’re a true resurrected corpse. A tsukumogami. But people can’t come back from the dead no matter what, you’re an entirely new being who mistakenly believes he was the former Hinata Hajime.”  
  
His heart was stolen from a grave. His eyes were plucked out of someone who had been buried that day. His face was sewn together. He could not smile without stretching the seams of his lips. He was frankenstein. He was meant to be Adam, but he became lucifer instead cast out of eden.  
  
Munakata held the tip of his blade, right at Hinata’s green eye. He was going to dye both of them pink soon. Hinata would not be able to see anything but scarlet. “Kamukura, get up and fight now…”  
  
“I don’t want to…”  
  
“Whose weapon are you going to become next? Who are you going to be used by next?”  
  
“I don’t…”  
  
“I’m sorry I could not save you, Hinata Hajime. You’ve become a thing that can only be used to harm others now. As long as you continue to exist, you will be continually used over and over again. Kamukura Izuru, if your former self really desired for hope… If he really hated despair… you should kill yourself right here.” 

 

Munakata Yasuke pulled back his sword, and then reached into his jacket and threw a revolver onto the ground. The same one Fuyuhiko had been holding before he plummeted off the side of the half built school. Hinata opened both of his mismatched eyes. They were struggling to look at the same thing, out of focus, out of alignment. “What will you do… If I die here?”  
  
“Hope’s Peak has fallen. As the organizer for that catastrophe, I’m sure you’re well aware of what will come next. Despair will spread out in waves, like a virus. The shockwave from the fall of Hope’s Peak will hit everything. I will save every member of Yukizome’s class, and then rally the survivors to put a stop to this before it spreads.” 

 

Hinata let his eyes fall shut, thinking of class 77-B. He daydreamed so many times about getting to walk to school with them. He wanted to spend his days laughing about stupid things, and complaining about tiny problems. Maybe, those dreams never even belonged to him in the first place and he was just Kamukura. “If all of them got to live, that wouldn’t be such a bad reason to die but… I don’t trust you.”  
  
“Then, I’ll kill myself as well and leave everything to Yukizome and Sakakura.”  
  
“You…?”  
  
“There are far worse outcomes than my death. If I can remove the biggest obstacle in the way, those two will carry on after me-”  
  
“You bastard! What the hell is that! You’re going to throw the life that Sakakura would die to protect away so easily? Do you even care at all how he feels?” Kamakura stopped worrying about using any talents and rushed forward, gripping Munakata by the stomach to tackle him. The two of them pushed against each other with all they had, like they were just boys fighting. “How uncool! Don’t lecture me like some kind of god about how I don’t feel anything, when you’re a goddamn insensitive idiot about the feelings of your two closest friends!!” 

 

Kamukura’s foot slipped and Munakata grabbed him by a long strand of his hair. Suddenly, he felt the side of his head slammed into a wall. Jeez, had these guys not done enough to his head already? Munakata held him there, and slammed his fist into his face over and over again. 

 

All grace and elegance from their fighting lost, they clawed at each other like mad dogs. Even feeling his jaw swelling up did not stop Kamukura from yelling. “Don’t say you’re doing this all for them, and then treat them like shit! You’d be nothing without them! Not when they’ve given you everything you have.”  
  
Munakata saw a pale sickly boy, who could only hide behind Sakakura Juzo. He cowered as he clung to his back. Even then, Juzo smiled at him like he was the sun. Him, a person not capable of doing a single thing for himself.

“I told you don’t say his name. What does a heartless doll know about my Juzo?”

  
Kamukura felt his world invert. He was thrown over shoulder by Munakata. As he watched slowly, he saw finally the pitch black Munakata’s sclera had turned into. Now he understood. Seiko Kimura’s drugs were enhancing all of his physical abilities.  
  
Izuru Kamukura was perfect, but he took on half of the ego of Hinata Hajime. Instead of becoming twice as strong, he just inherited the flaws of both. The more Hajime he became the less talented, he just went back to being a rash and impulsive loud mouth. Munakata played with his feelings and told him a lie to make him lose faith in himself. It did not matter how many talents he had, he was still a loser with no self esteem, and barely a thing called self in the first place. 

 

Kamukura grabbed the knife he had caught earlier in their fight. As he landed on the ground he raised it in the air right at Munakata’s eyes, while Munakata had the tip of his blade over his heart. If he moved, Munakata’s eyes would be lost and his heart would be crushed.  
  
There was no way Munakata would - he felt cold steel sliding in between two of his ribs. He forgot, Munakata had no regard for his own life. _Does Munakata himself know that he’s fallen to despair? Is that why he wants to die taking down the greatest despair?_  
  
He pushed the tip of the knife into Munakata’s right eye. _I’m sorry, Komeaeda. I’m sorry for scratching your hope._ Munakata told him that hope required sacrifices. Unlike all the effort that Munakata sacrificed to get as strong as he did, Hinata never sacrificed a single thing. Even if Munakata were to die though, despite his admiration Komaeda probably would not shed a single tear. He would just go looking forward to the hope that came up to replace him when such a great hope was lost.  
  
Komaeda told him so many times, all he wanted was to sacrifice himself for the sake of the others’ hope. Every time he heard Komaeda say those words, Hinata became angry, and he did not know why. He thought he understood it now, in these brief moments that played out so slowly in front of his eyes they looked like a film. _Why do you have to be the one who gets sacrificed, Komaeda?_ As duplicitious as Komaeda was, as impossible as it was to trust him, it was so obvious that Komaeda suffered more than anybody else in the class. Why did the person who was suffering the most have to die so everybody else could be happy? 

 

 _Isn’t that the person who needs to be saved the most?_  
_Why don’t you ever ask me to save you?_ _  
_ _If you asked, I’d…_  
What could he do?  
He was so weak.  
He was too weak to put the effort in to get a talent.  
He destroyed the school he loved so much.  
His identity was so half assed he believed a silly lie Munakata made up to mess with him.  
He was someone who should have never been born.  
Not just Kamukura.  
Hinata Hajime, the boy who could never be filled up with anything.  
His whole life was a joke.  
All of that was true he did not disagree.  
And yet…  
  
He was fighting so hard to live. As his heartbeat quickened, he wondered if this sensation now was what Komaeda felt. He reached forward and grabbed the blade with his bare hand, and slowly began to yank it out of his chest overpowering Munakata. As he slid it out of his ribs again, he gave one final push with everything he had and threw Munakata who flew backwards until he collided with a wall. 

  
Kamukura leaned his weight against the wall behind him, putting his fingers inside the hole that had been cut between his ribs. _Hey, Komaeda... As long as I’m alive, I won’t let you be sacrificed for hope. If that causes despair… I don’t care…_  
  
🦔

 

Fuyuhiko, Pekoyama and Kirumi finally finished ascending the stairs of the tower. As he took his first step into a dark room, Fuyuhiko immediately recognized a familiar smell. The scent of blood, for a natural born Yakuza it almost triggered a nostalgic memory from his childhood.  
  
He grabbed Pekoyama by the wrist, and forcefully yanked her back. “There’s blood everywhere, don’t let go of me, and don’t take off your blindfold no matter what.” He barked the order out and Pekoyama could only quietly nod. Ever since they found Kirumi she had been in a weird mood. 

 

Fuyuhiko was the first to see. Hinata was lying there collapsed against a wall. Damnit. A good guy like Hinata should not get himself covered in his own blood fighting for the sake of trash like him. He rushed forward but was stopped by a short sword someone had drawn.  
  
He looked up to see orange hair, and a woman wearing an apron. He thought that her once vibrant hair color, had become considerably duller since the last time he saw her. “M-Miss Yukizome…?”  
  
“Don’t take another step Fuyuhiko. It’s dangerous.”  
  
“The hell are you saying, it’s dangerous! I’m fucking Yakuza! My entire life is danger! Are you underestimating me too?”  
  
“This is no time for your complex, Fuyuhiko. Listen to your teacher.”  
  
“What? You know who that is, right? That’s Hinata. That idiot who’s always trying way too hard to impress others, even though he doesn’t care that much for other people. He got himself hurt trying to look cool again, I have to help him.”  
  
“That’s… that’s not Hinata anymore.”  
  
Fuyuhiko saw pink leaking out of Hinata.  
Fuyuhiko always thought it was his fault.  
Everyone in that class was enjoying themselves.  
They were all good people.  
They even accepted someone like Pekoyama.  
She could have had a taste of a normal school life if not for him.  
If he had never gone to that school.  
His sister never would have nagged to be sent to the reserve course.  
She never would have died.  
He never would have killed to avenge her.  
The despair from that day forward started with his actions.  
Because he was an unstable violent little brat.  
He wanted Yukizome and the rest of his classmates to be happy and get along without him. 

  
“Why aren’t you saving him? You’re a teacher, and he’s a kid. He’s just a dumb kid that got caught up in all this.”  
  
“I’m your teacher. I have to save my class. I’ve failed to save you guys, so many times before this…I’m your teacher but I was never able to be any help.”  
  
Fuyuhiko looked down. In his mind’s eye, the class picture they all took together with Miss Yukizome that first day when it seemed like they could all get along and truly become a class, burned up in his mind. He threw it away. “You’re not my teacher. I’m a delinquent who skips class to smoke cigarettes behind the school.”  
  
He used to smoke but he quit, and he had never been late for class not even once. Fuyuhiko still tried to push past her, dragging Pekoyama along with him.  
  
Yukizome moved forward to stop them, but Kirumi got in her way brandishing kitchenware like it was a weapon. “My, my, you’ve certainly made a mess of this things. This blood is everywhere and you still haven’t cleaned it up yet? I guess that’s to be expected of a housekeeper.”  
  
“I know my talent isn't much, but what exactly is the difference between a maid and a housekeeper.”  
  
Yukizome Chisa, the Super High School Level Housekeeper.  
Tojo Kirum, the Super High School Level Maid.  
  
“Simple, a maid devotes themselves to serving their masters, a housekeeper is just part time hired help.”  
  
“Oh, it’s on sister!”  
  
Fuyuhiko suddenly saw a fork fly past his face and decided now was not the time to look back.  
  
Behind him, Pekoyama muttered. “I should be the one who’s fighting.” 

  
“Stop whining already! I’m not going to figure out what’s wrong if you just bitch and moan all day without telling me anything!”  
  
“Hmph.”  
  
“Whatever. Help me with Hinata.”  
  
The two of them got on either side of him, lifting him up.  
  
Kirumi looked to the unconscious Munakata as she drew a kitchen knife from her sleeve. “Is that your master? How cute…”  
  
“No he’s my…”  
  
Before they could finish, every light in the room turned on at once stunning both of them. They looked to the side to see, piles upon piles of tvs stacked up on top of one another as if they were on the inside of an electronics store. 

 

🦔

 

Sakakura Juzo tore through the city in search of Matsuda. He stopped when he saw two familiar faces. A blonde brat, and a brat with white streaks in his hair. “You two are Yukizome’s brats. Hey, what the hell happened to him?” 

 

Medaka was carrying Gundham on her back. Gonta could have run, but nobody present really trusted him with Gundham’s body. Angie was at the back of the group, claiming she was praying for Gundham’s soul. She did not seem to be praying too hard.  
  
Sonia immediately grabbed onto Juzo. “Tanaka-san will die! We have to get him medical help! Tanaka-san dying, it is too cruel…”  


Juzo remembered catching Sonia sneaking out of that boy’s dorm late at night when he was working security. That was right, those two were a thing. The person she loved was dying right in front of her and she could do nothing to help. Just like him.  
  
He had something far more important to do. Munakata was counting on him. Even after he betrayed Munakata, he was forgiven, he needed to be useful this time. Besides, every kid in Chisa’s class was ultimate despair, just like the bitch Enoshima Junko. 

  
He turned around… and then offered him his back. “Kurokami can’t run right? Then give him to me. I’ll bring him to Tsumiki, she’s been with us the entire time.” Kurokami quickly, without hesitation lifted the unconscious but still faintly breathing Gundham onto his back. “This doesn’t mean a damn thing. I’m going to save the kid, then I’m going to drag you all in front of Munakata when I get back.”  
  
Juzo threatened as he ran off. He forgot about chasing Matsuda entirely, and brought the kid to the creepy nurse girl. Chisa had told her to hide in the tower for her own safety. She seemed like the type who was too afraid of authority figures to disobey orders and would do anything to please them. Poor brat. Even if she was screwing around with his head Juzo could not quite hate her.  
  
Perhaps that was the reason why Yukizome kept forgiving them, and kept trying to save them, no matter how far they all fell into despair. What was he doing though? He was not someone kind like Chisa. He was not even strong enough to be by Munakata’s side. What did he think he was doing trying to save a single person.  
  
“Um…?” Mikan hesitated when Gundham was finally brought before her. Immediately, he saw tears well up in her eyes. “Nooo, Tanaka-san, I’m sorry! This is all my fault somehow! Please hate me!”  
  
She started apologizing like she was the one who shot him. Juzo took a step forward. “Calm down, even people as useless as us are good for at least one thing right? As long as we have that we won’t be thrown away, so there’s no need to cry.”  
  
Mikan wiped at her eyes. “That’s right, it’s because I have this talent that I can be useful to others. They’ll need me as long as I still have talent…”

 

 Before she could even touch the body however, somebody came from behind and kicked her hard in the back of the head. “You dumb bitch, pay attention to the forbidden action around your wrist.” Matsuda Yasuke said, stepping over her to get to Gundham’s body. 

  
Around her wrist, a forbidden action flashed across in red. _Cannot use talent._

  
“Nobody needs you around? Nobody wants you? You’re never good enough? Who gives a shit. You’ll be even more of a good for nothing if you’re dead, so stop.”  
  
Juzo saw the man Munakata asked him to go after right in front of him. There was no way even he could screw something like this up. All he had to do was leave Gundham behind. Juzo stepped forward and grabbed Matsuda by the wrist hard. “Fix this kid, and then I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”  
  
“Wow. What a great deal for me.”  
  
“Quit mouthing off! I’m not playing around.” 

 

Matsuda remembered what Kamukura told him. He was part of the seventy seventh class too. Even though he was an anti-social loser who spent all day in his lab and never got along with anyone, that crying girl, and that boy bleeding out on the floor were both his classmates.  
  
Matsuda reached into his pocket and drew out the scalpel he had stolen away.  
  
“Matsuda-kun! You want to be useful too!” 

 

“I’m not doing this for him. I just thought right now, if I did something like this I might be able to atone, so it’s still all about me in the end…”  
  
“Son...ia…” Tanaka muttered in the throes of his painful sleep.  
  
“Looks like you’ve got girl problems too. Sucks to be you.” Matsuda said, as he removed the jacket from Tanaka’s shoulder and started to inspect the wound. 

 

🦔

 

Takumi stood on the roof of the tower, playing with his toes over the edge. As usual, he was murmuring in a fast paced manner because that was the only way he knew how to hold a conversation. “Do you think a suicide counts as a murder? You’re still killing someone. I feel bad, real bad, for people who kill themselves because they’ll only ever be able to kill one person. They’ll never become a cool murderer like that.”  
  
“Hmph.” Kei ignored him.  
  
“People kill themselves for all kinds of reasons. If you can kill someone and it would be considered a crime of passion. Then if you at the height of your emotions try to kill yourself, isn’t that also a passionate killing? I’m jealous, really jealous of people who can commit suicide. That must be the most passionate killing of all, but you can only do it once.” 

“Do you listen to yourself when you talk?”  
  
“Not really, no. I just open my mouth and words come out. Was I being rude? I’m sorry if I was talking over you. If you have any opinions on suicides then please tell me I’d love to hear it.”  
  
“No. I have nothing to say.”  
  
“You don’t talk a lot. Are you socially awkward or something? You know the killer whose just a reject from society with poor social skills is a bad stereotype. There are plenty of charismatic serial killers like Hannibal Lecter who are able to dominate a conversation.”  
  
“Do you have any other interests? Literally? Any of them at all?” Kei who used to see someone and immediately think of ways to kill them, was at the end of his rope.  
  
“Yeah, I’ve definitely decided. The words you said inspired me. No matter what, I won’t kill myself.”  
  
“When the hell did I say anything like that! How did you reach that conclusion!?” 

 

Takumi just ignored Munakata and went to the next topic of conversation. He suddenly yawned looking disinterested after getting so worked up a moment ago. The mission told them all to come to the tower, but nothing interesting had happened yet. He walked away to the other side of the roof. “The elevator was too big of a space. Next time, I’ll put myself in a box and you carry me up here.”  
  
“There’s no way I’m doing that!” 

  
“What’s with those eyes? If looks could kill…”  
  
“I’m not glaring at you harshly. Your eyes are just way too sleepy in comparison.” 

  
“I know I’m a killer as low as trash, but please don’t be mean to me. My self esteem can’t handle it.” Takumi yawned, and then knelt down as he finally found what he was looking for. There was a sniper rifle that had been set up and left abandoned. “This isn’t technically a killing game, you know. Isn’t it odd? Some other psycho besides us is already running around trying to kill people.”

 

Takumi picked up the blanket that had been left by the sniper rifle as well, probably as some kind of improvised cushioning or cover. He ehld it against his face and deeply breathed in. “Nostalgiac scent…” He murmured underneath his breath.  
  
“Weirdo.”  
  
“It’s not nice to call people weirdoes. I’m just misunderstood.”  
  
“I understand you perfectly.”  
  
“R-really? This is the first time in my life somebody has tried to-”  
  
“I understand you’re a weirdo!”

 

🦔

  
Kurokami Medaka climbed up the stairs to reach Hinata’s side. Matsuda, Juzo, Mikan, Gundham and Sonia were all still on the ground floor. Gonta and Angie came with her. When she finally reached the room Hinata was in, she saw both a girl she did not recognize and Miss Yukizome fighting each other.  
  
“Why… why are you fighting? There are two injured people right there. That should be more important.”  
  
Hinata regaining consciousness pushed both Fuyuhiko and Peko away, and stole the sword from behind Peko’s back.  
  
Munakata at the same time woke as well, and stabbed his sword into the ground to lift himself up. Both of them stared at each other like they were looking at a weed that needed to be cut down. 

  
“H-hey, we’re all gathered together here aren’t we? We all went to escape? We should work together! I’m sure all of you want to go back to that school too…”  
  
Medaka’s naive pleas went entirely unheard. She looked around and saw a bright light suddenly turn on in addition to all the other lights, like a spot light. She suddenly felt like she was center stage.  
  
“We’re all human aren’t we?” 

 _All of them except me._  
  
Suddenly, from above Shiranui jumped and landed on top of the pile of tvs. Next to her, a girl that Medaka did not recognize who smelled like she was rotting away landed as well. Shiranui picked out three loose bangles and threw them on the floor. She picked up a remote, and hit the button causing every tv to turn on at once.  
  
_Monokuma Hunter!_ _  
_ _Mission Complete!_ _  
_ _Continue…?_

“Now that you’ve all finished beating the tutorial level it’s time to explain the rules, Kiddos!” Kurokami Medaka saw the face of Enoshima Junko flash onscreen. “Rule number one, the all improtant time limit! When the clock runs out and the sun rises those nifty little arm bracelets boys and girls each one of you will be injected with a powerful case of good night irene!”  
  
“Rule number two, the mastermind! While everyone else is catching zs during the day time, he or she will be wide awake! The mastermind is the only participant in this game of 22 players that can move around during the daytime as a privilege! Once on the prowl, the mastermind has exactly one week to kill one person. Yep, in case you haven’t figured it out yet there’s a traitor. You’re going to have to do something about it. Hey, why not gang up on someone you don’t like and hope they’re the attacker!”   
  
“Take a look at those itty bitty arm bracelets. Each of you has a specific thing that you’re not allowed to do at any time. Performing that thing will trigger a lethal injection of poison faster than you can say… No, wait I’m bored of this sentence now.”  
  
“Anyway, I gathered you all here to explain the win conditions. There’s a mastermind hidden among you, if a week passes by without a single person dying then the game ends. If you root out the mastermind and kill them, then the game ends as well. The secret however, is the mastermind can be anybody.”  
  
Suddenly, Enoshima Junko spread her acrylic nail covered hand onscreen and revealed the red strings tied to each of her fingers. Suddenly, her entire appearance changed right before their eyes. Sitting there instead was Naegi Makoto. “This game is also called the doppelganger game. One of you isn’t the real you, but me in disguise. My act is flawless, because, well, everything about me is! Puhuhuhu! You’re all being deceived, oh and well you’re deceiving yourselves of course thinking you could ever truly know someone.”   
  
"Or maybe, I'm already you and you're not just aware of it yet. One day you're going to take the mask off, and realize all along you were a super cool, busty, supermodel on the inside! You don't know yourselves! You don't know other people! Since when did everyone start pretending to be human anyway?"   
  
Naegi Makoto looked at her nails. She looked like she was getting bored again even after dropping such dramatic lines. “Well, anyway kill each other for the beauty of despair, or just because you feel like it or whatever. A goddess of despair like me accepts all worshippers. Is that a cool line to say? Oh, I forgot because I was so bored, am I becoming the cute and forgetful type now? There’s one more rule, you’re going to be issued a new mission every week. The missions are all controlled by someone outside of the game, they can be a mini-boss or a puzzle master, like I care! If you fail a mission everybody dies, but if you can’t come up with any way to solve that mission just kill the person who gave out the mission in the first place. Make sure to show them your love for me! Bye, bye!!!!”  
  
Naegi Makoto’s lips kissed the screen bye bye, as every single screen at once turned off for a moment. Even then, Enoshima’s voice was still speaking. “To give you guys motivation, so I can get some real interesting performers out of you actors here’s some inspiration. Broadcast live for all to see!”

Every television in the room turned back on again. They saw just like them, a group of twenty two people locked inside a gymnasium and told to kill each other. Medaka reached forward and pressed her hand against the tv screen. She could not feel even a little bit of warmth.   
  
“Zenkichi is that… is that where you are?”  
  
Medaka looked at everyone in the room about to fight. They should not be here. They should not be fighting. She did not even want to be here. She wanted to escape this city and go where Zenkichi was. He was in danger because she left him behind after all.  
  
She raised her fist in the air, and swung down with enough strength to shatter the floor underneath them. At last moment Kurokami Medaka’s arm went limp, and the strength drained out of her. She just let her hand fall on the ground. She hit it again weakly. “Stop… Stop… Stop fighting…” The once fight happy girl curled up and cradled her head in her hands, bowing her her entire body as if she were begging them. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”  
  
Everyone in the room stopped to stare at her.  
Kurokami Medaka’s emotions so powerful not a single person wrapped up in their own desires could ignore them.  
Before she could say another word, the floor underneath them exploded.  
The tower collapsed.  
They all fell apart.   
All Medaka could do was grab onto the still intact wall and stop herself from falling. If she fell from this height she would be killed by the poison in her bracelet for sure. She just wanted to fight for the sake of others, but inside this game over and over again all she had done so far was protect herself. 

 

🦔

 

Kamukura Izuru dreamed. 

  
In his dream, he was in the neurology lab. His black hair had reached his shoulders and  
His head and face were both covered in bandages. He wore a blue hospital robe, to cover up the several parts of his body that had been bandaged as well.  
  
Even though he looked like he should be in pain, all he did was stare at the wall with a blank face. Next to him he heard the sound of Yasuke muttering underneath his breath. He was probably just complaining again.  
  
The peace was interrupted when suddenly the door flew open. Tactclessly, a boy with white hair invited himself in holding a shopping bag. He was wearing a school uniform, but lacking any taste at all he had pulled a green coat over his vest and tie. Whatever this person’s talent was, he was definitely not the Ultimate Fashionista.  
  
“Hello there! I’m in a good mood today! So I came to have fun!”  
  
“So, you’re in a bad mood today, and you came by to annoy me out of spite.”  
  
“That’s not what I said at all, Matsuda-kun!”  
  
“You’re definitely the type who lies as easily as he breathes. Trust me, I know that type.”  
  
“Oh, does that happen to be because that’s the type you’re romantically attracted to Matsuda-kun? I’m sorry it would never work out between us because there’s already someone I love.”  
  
“Hey. Get out of here already, or I’ll show your mouth shut.” He threw a scalpel at Komaeda. Komaeda did not even try to dodge him, but the thrown object naturally just missed him and embedded itself in the wall next to him.  
  
“Don’t be mad. I brought a present.” Komaeda walked forward and put a volume of magical girl manga on the table. Matsuda who had looked ready to make good on his threat a moment ago, backed away when Komaeda suddenly got too close. Komaeda felt like he had read the situation rong, and just gave an innocent smile trying to apologize with that. “It was on sale today. Lucky me, right?”  
  
“Whatever.” Matsuda said snatching the manga away. He pulled it open and started to read it. His always stressed out face, however, did not seem to get any more relaxed.  
  
Komaeda walked with his hands behind his back. He looked like the carefree, happy go lucky child he always appeared to be at first. Slowly, he stopped in front of Kamukura and reached out to caress Kamukura’s bandaged face. “Do you know who I am?”  
  
“Komaeda…?”  
  
“Your memory must be improving, if you can remember an insignificant person like myself destined to die and be forgotten.  
  
“Didn’t I tell you not to flirt with the experiment?” 

 

Komaeda suddenly grabbed the motionless Kamukura by the side of the head, and pressed their faces together like they were posing for a selfie. “...Jealous?”  
  
“I’ve got a new idea for your treatment. How about I punch you until you get it?”  
  
“You’re terrible, Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“Shut up, people are always praising me about my bedside manner.” Matsuda said, without looking up from his manga. “It’s your fault for breaking Gekkougahara, she was a nice girl, now you’re stuck with me the asshole.”  
  
As he said that, his phone started to ring.  
“You’ve got a call!”  
“You’ve got a call!”  
“Hey, answer it!”  
“Hey, Matsuda-kun!”  
“A super cute girl is calling you!”  
“A girl with big boobs is on the other side are you going to ignore her?”  
“I-it’s not like I want you to pick up anyway.”  
  
“I told that brat to stop changing my ringtone…” Matsuda said, as he flipped open his phone. The person who had bedazzled his cellphone was pretty obvious to Komaeda but he did not want to think about her. “I’ll be back soon. Act like adults.”  
  
Komaeda patted Kamukura on the head, happily. “Okaaay, got it!” He looked innocent, just like a child. That was how Matsuda knew he could not trust him, but there was somebody more important he had to take care of first.  
  
Komaeda the moment Matsuda left the room, tapped a finger on Kamukura’s lips. “Hey… If we should act like adults, want me to show you to kiss like an adult?”  
  
“...”  
  
Kamukura just kept staring at him with no response.  
  
“It’s no fun telling jokes if nobody laughs. Well, I guess that’s what happens when untalented trash tries comedy.” Komaeda reached within his plastic bag, and pulled out a mochi treat for Kamukura. “I brought a gift for you too.”  
  
Even after he placed the Sakuramochi in Kamukura’s hands, Kamukura only stared forward unfocused.  
  
Komaeda leaned in curious. “Won’t you eat it? I’ll check if it’s poisonous.” He lifted Kamukura’s hands and took a bite from the other side. “Yum. It’s good. Enjoy your meal.”

 

Slowly. Unsteady. Kamukura opened his mouth and took a bite out of the Sakuramochi, the way he observed Matsuda doing when he was up late at night shoving snacks into his mouth. However, before he could take a single bite, he dropped it from his mouth and started to drool.  
  
Komaeda suddenly started to sweat, feeling concerned. “Wai… are you okay? There, there…” He tried to pat Kamukura on the back, but the boy just kept staring forward his empty face replaced with a look of disgust.  
  
“What happened…?” Matsuda asked, walking back in the room.  
  
“Sorry, looks like he just couldn’t stand the food.”  
  
“Couldn’t stand… You, what did you make him eat?”  
  
“Huh…? I was just trying to help. I’ll be your nurse, Matsuda-kun for the sake of making your talent shine brighter..”  
  
“No thanks.”  
  
“Just the sakuramochi I bought at the school store.”  
  
“I see. I heard in his auditions, that was his least favorite food. Even though his brain was tampered with, does his body remember?”  
  
“He’s really pale. Are you being too mean to him, Matsuda-kun?” 

 

“He has surgery again in fifteen minutes. Don’t be too clingy like last time.” Matsuda said as he walked by, and hit Komaeda on the head with his manga volume. It was his rude way of telling Komaeda to say goodbye already.  
  
As Komaeda tried to move away, Kamukura’s hand reached out for him suddenly. “Strange, he looks so frail, like he could die any moment, but his hands are so warm.” Komaeda said in a whisper, like he only wanted those words to be shared between the two of them. “Are you scared? Don’t worry, as long as there’s still hope, it will be alright.” 

 

Matsuda waited by the door as Komaeda walked out. “It’s too bad. He’s too much of an idiot to form permanent memories right, now he’ll just forget you again.”  
  
“Then I’ll keep coming by.”  
  
“If you do that I’ll kill you.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun, how did you ever become a talented doctor with such terrible treatment of your patients?” Komaeda asked, once again stepping too close and crossing a boundary he was not supposed to cross as he leaned in to Matsuda’s face and smiled. Matsuda did not reject him, but he also seemed to feel nothing at all about their sudden closeness either. Komaeda’s heart sank just a little bit.  
  
_It will be alright._ _  
_ _There is hope._  
  
Those words repeated in his mind, as Kamukura’s red eyes stared up at the ceiling. His hair fell everywhere, his bandages had been undone, there were several electrodes attached to his head. A single sheet covered his naked body. All he could do was silently stare as he saw Matsuda’s hands appear above him.  
  
“Blood pressure, pulse are normal range. Give the test subject anesthesia.” 

 

_How many times have I met you for the first time?_

_I saw you._ _  
_ _And it was only that day._ _  
_ _I started to feel._ _  
_ _My heart began to beat._ _  
  
_

Hinata felt the floor underneath him slowly rocking. He was sitting on a boat. Across from him, Komada was sitting there. As always, he was wearing that lonely smile on his face. “If true hope was born from my sacrifice… why, there’s be no greater honor!”  Komaeda curled his fingers around the air, as if he was trying to grasp something invisible.  
  
“I see. And what exactly is your definition of hope?” Hinata looked up with dull eyes.  
  
“Hope is yeah…. It’s something absolutely good. Overflowing with unlimited goodwill, dreams, and happiness. It’s an idea that almost feels like a whimsical fantasy.”  
  
Hinata’s hair grew longer until it was pitch black. When he raised his head again he had a different face. “I’m not interested… If hope is what kills you, then I don’t need hope.” 

Hinata’s mismatched eyes suddenly peeled awake. He looked around and saw he had fallen into some kind of an electronics store. The only reason he had survived the fall, was probably because of a boring talent like good luck. 

The televisions that had come alive when the announcements were being made, were still on, hijacked by some kind of signal and broadcasting a game. Hinata looked through his mismatched eyes, blurry, unfocused, as if two people were trying to look out of his eyes at the same time.  
  
He saw Komaeda’s shape appear on the screen. On television, Zenkichi threw his arms around Komaeda and comforted him. Why? Oh, because they were both trapped in another killing game.  
  
Hinata reached out with a shaky hand towards Komaeda’s face on the screen. Is this what Munakata said, most human beings were so full of emotions that they were trembling with it?  
  
He crawled forward and pressed the side of his cheek against the cold screen.   
  
“Hey, Komaeda…”  
  
Kamukura said in a dreamlike voice.  
  
“If I said that you were my hope, would you laugh?”

[ **Week one end.]  
[Nineteen survivors remaining.]  
** **[Insert coin to continue.]**


	15. Seven Fruit Rasp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flowery chapter.

**Chapter Two: God Punishes the Elite**  
Day One: Part One  


****

_I, like the flowers, will eventually scatter away…_

A new character introduced to the stage.  
What is a story?  
Just a series of events happening one after another.  
A grand flow of events.  
Like water flowing in a river.  
Like chains connecting to one another.  
If viewed that way from start to finish they seem inevitable  
If you love stories too much, you might drown in a river.  
You might be pulled forward like a slave by the chain around your neck.

Her story started with a single memory, or maybe it didn’t, maybe that was just how she saw it. She lay on the ground, her body trembled, she burned all the way up to her eyelids. Due to the heat haze blurring her vision she could not make out anything more than silhouettes of the two adults who cast their shadows over her.

One a man, due to all the difficult to understand words he used she assumed he was a doctor.  
The other a woman, she spoke with a feminine voice, and spoke like she was in pain just watching her. The girl assumed that was her mother but she was not sure.

“Why isn’t she dead already?” The man asked.

“Why is she still alive?” The woman replied.

“She may die at any moment. Rather, I don’t know why she’s not dying yet. It’s mysterious,” the man was faceless to her except for his eyes, which regarded her cold and clinical. There was no pity for a suffering child at all in his eyes, and yet she still liked the way he looked at her more than her mother’s eyes.

Her body seized. Surges of her hot blood boiled and bloomed. The inside of her room suddenly bloomed with flowers. To her flowers were… the beauty of the outside world she would never be allowed to see because of her sickness. She had not been allowed outside once since birth, and the only people she ever saw were a series of doctors that woman brought in. The only flower she would ever see was the ones laid on her grave.

Still, she thought flowers were like her. It did not matter how beautifully they bloomed, they could only fade away afterwards. Her body was so many beautiful colors right now, dyed red from her fever, purple from her sickness, and blue from how difficult breathing became for her. She looked like she had just rolled around in a field of flowers and gotten all of their colors smudged in ugly blotches on her body.

In the center of the garden she saw a withered old tree. It’s branches twisted out, the gnarled wood looking like skeletal limbs reaching for her through the mist of flowers. An old sakura tree. She could tell because there were cherry blossoms still clinging to life.

Blossoms, clinging to life, having been broken, wounds decaying, and yet still yearning. That was what she was, a branch that could never bear fruit, a cherry blossom that could never bloom, all there was left was to wait to die in winter.

No matter how much she yearned, no matter if she wanted to fight the approaching winter, it was no use. She was nothing more than a pitiful creature. She was born sick, and she was going to die sick. Adults always looked at her, to them the story of her life was already written beginning to end as a tragedy. It’s terrible, seeing a child suffering like this.

Empty words like that.  
She was plucked again and again by the people.  
Until there were no petals left on her flower.  
They were all snatched away from her.  
She was dyed red by sickness, and kept awake all night most nights crying she could not even watch a glittering dream as it passed her by.  
Living was just another symptom of her sickness, and yet she refused to die.  
Each of her heartbeats burned her.

Everyone always treats me with such a fragile kindness. They fill this room with flowers and toys, and hold me when I cry. They tell me it’s not my fault that I’m sick like this. My mother watches over me every night but…

But what I really want them to say.  
What I really want her to say is...

Her branch reached out once more. If just one person were to hold her hand, then she might no longer be lost. She looked at the woman in front of her, who turned her pitiful eyes down on her.

“She’s in such agony I wish she could just die in peace.”

“It hurts… I wish…” The girl’s hands shook like a branch in the wind.

“I wish she’d die already. If she died, it would be much easier.”

“Kaa-kaa….” She tried to call out to the woman who she thought was her mother.

“You poor child.”

What I really wanted her to say was…  
_“Can’t even die.”_  
_“Can’t even live.”_  
_“You are a failure of life.”_  
_“Someone like you.”_  
_“Someone like you.”_  
_“Someone like you should have never been born.”_  
_“Nanami.”_  
_“Nanami.”_  
_“Forgive your mother for giving birth to you.”_  
_“Nanami.”_  
_“Nanami.”_

No, don’t say that!  
Don’t apologize for giving birth to me!  
Don’t say sorry for being my mother!|  
Don't stop being my mother!  
I wanted… I wanted to…

Nanami felt a pillow being pressed over the head of her younger self. She struggled against it, and felt the tears of her mother falling from above like rain meant to wash her away. In the present she suddenly woke up, drowning in her own sweat.

“I don’t need you to tell me that, mother.” Nanami muttered to herself looking around where she had fallen asleep. There was nothing more tedious than memories of the past, it was boring to watch the scenes you’ve already seen before play out. “Being lectured on what you already know. Really, really how dull.”

Her voice was faint, as delicate as a cherry blossom falling on the water, light enough to float on the film-like surface of the water, only to be carried away by the river.

She coughed horribly. As if she had swallowed those pink petals, and now they were caught in her throat. She coughed hard enough to make the branches in her lungs shake until the petals fell off. Despite how sick she looked, there was something refined about her, she coughed into her own hand, she was ladylike, she was florid.

Nanami, a girl who never should have been born. A girl who never should have lived this long, but unfortunately she was still alive. She stood in an abandoned pharmacy reaching up towards a shelf, that was too high for her petite body to reach.

Suddenly, her cough came back harder. She doubled over in pain coughing into her hand. As she slowly removed her hand from her mouth and looked at her palm, she saw three pink spots, three more cherry blossoms.

 

Suddenly, a strong wind blew into the store. Kurokami Medaka. The wind seemed to change direction with her presence as she threw open the doors. She walked up to the same shelf. Due to her stunted growth, Nanami’s head barely reached her chest.

That girl who appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly had enough presence like an actor who had stepped on stage and stolen the entire show, did not even notice Nanami next to her. She was in her own little world mumbling to herself. “Ugh, Kamukura-senpai should have told me what medicine he needed. I don’t know anything about medicine because no one’s ever taught me…. But if I go back now he’s going to call me a genius ditz again, a nutty professor, it’s too embarrassing!”

“You’re a child who can only do what they’re told? What a good child you are, or perhaps what a bad child,” Nanami rasped.

“Ah!” Medaka was surprised by the diminutive figure suddenly standing next to her. “What is this? A cute girl? I like cute girls! And cute boys as well! And everyone else!”

“You sound like you have no taste in people, or maybe you’re just undiscerning…” If Nanami were not already sick she was sure she would get sick from this girl’s sweetness quickly.

“Hahaha! What a wonderful sense of humor you have! I’m terrible at telling jokes, so I think it’s a wonderful quality for a person to have.”

“Really, because you seem like a joke to me.”

“Anyway!” Nanami got the feeling that this girl was just going to tune out anything negative, she said. “You’ve saved me from my own ditziness. Now I won’t be taunted by my senpais until I cry.”

“That’s too bad I really wanted you to cry.”

“Do you know which of these medicines can be used as a painkiller?”

Nanami glanced back up at the shelf. She was looking for the same medicine but it was too difficult for her to reach. The idea of getting help from this girl in any way was annoying to her. The moment she realized her sickness, she was probably going to look at her with the same pity in her eyes that everyone else did. “I’ve been in a hospital all of my life, so I’m pretty familiar with medicine, but I don’t really feel like helping a stranger. I mean, depending on a cute little girl like me for help, how lazy you are.”

Nanami was actually older than the girl in front of her she was quite certain, that girl looked about her brother’s age at the most, but she was good at playing the helpless child role by now. She was so good that she could not become anything else, she was stuck in the role by this point.

“Last name Kuro - Kami, black god. First name Medaka, Japanese rice fish. My name is Kurokami Medaka, every time I see people, I know people, and I grow to admire people.”

“As a ‘people’ I don’t want to be seen, known, or admired by you.”

“I’ve introduced myself so we’re no longer strangers! Now, please…otherwise this will turn into quite the Meda-trial for me.”

Is she making puns with her own name? Nanami sighed. She had a feeling this was one of those types of people who assumed they were the main characters of their own lives. A helpless victim like her would know nothing about that. “As soon as I look away from your face, I’m already going to forget it.”

“Huh? What? You can forget my beautiful face? People have told me I’m cuter than a hundred chihuahuas combined, an unforgettable beauty.”

“...Pardon?”

“I’m sorry, that was a joke.”

“You’re right, you are terrible.” Nanami put a hand on her face, her fingers so thin they looked like claws, and she clawed at her cheek. “It has nothing to do with how you look. I can’t tell human beings apart, I never lost the hospital room before this point after all.”

“Prospoagnosia?”

“No, I just don’t care about you,” Nanami said as she finally sighed and relented, her stamina was low and this girl was already tiring her out. “Oh my, oh my, it’s impolite not to introduce myself. My name is Nanami, literally it means seven fruit rasp.”

Nanami lost control of herself. She coughed, until she lost all feelings in the legs underneath her. She withered at the roots, and started to fall forward.

Medaka caught her with an arm extended out. When she saw the concern on Medaka’s face, Nanami did everything she could to push her away. She escaped from her grip and took a few more stumbling footsteps forward.

“You’re sick…?”

“I’m the sick little girl type.”

“You…”

Poor child. Nanami anticpated the words before they could even leave Medaka’s mouth.

“You must be so strong. Living this long, and standing on your own, you must be a lot like Kumagawa aren’t you?”

What a strange thing to say. “My apologies for being rude but...you’re a strange girl.”

“Let me take you to my friends! Now that we’ve become friends like this you should become friends with them as well!” Kurokami Medaka, Nanami felt like she was going to be smothered by this girl. But, she was used to being a helpless girl so she just nodded along.

Kurokami Medaka immediately picked her up on her back, and grabbed the painkillers that Nanami instructed her. Nanami rested her head against that girl’s sharp shoulder blades. Her mother who had been too afraid to touch her because a girl as fragile like her might break at any time had never held her like this.

That girl used the word friend so easily.  
Nanami never had a friend in her life.  
No one came to visit her in her little room, and slowly she forgot what people’s faces looked like.  
Really, really how strange.

“It wasn’t so bad you know. My parents always kept my hospital room filled with flowers. The air was fragrant, there were so many pretty colors but it was just…”

“A beautiful coffin?” Medaka answered her.

Like she understood her.  
How stupid.  
What a stupid girl.  
A girl so healthy with such a perfect body could never understand her.

🦔

“Kurokami-sama.”

“For the last time, I’m not her you damn brat. I swear you’re doing this on purpose just to annoy me.”

“You overestimate how much I care about you to think I would actually go out of my way to annoy you,” Nanami said before turning to the other faceless person in the woman. “My apologies, you just all look the same to me.”

“Look I’m the last person who should be bitching about someone being rude to him, but still don’t hide it being that politeness. I can’t stand that passive aggressive crap.”

Yasuke said as he curled up his spine in his hospital chair. The three of them in the aftermath of the end of the first week had made the abandoned hospital their base, a temporary truce called to help Tanaka Gundham recover from his surgery.

He brought the manga volume he was reading and draped it over his face. “Besides you should be able to tell us apart, I’m a failure of a human being and she’s not.”

Medaka sat there smiling in the corner, at how good everyone was getting along. She was completely oblivious to the mood and unable to read the mood as usual.

“Did I hurt your delicate sensibilities? I’m oh so sorry. How unladylike of me. Should I prostrate myself at your feet until you forgive me.”

“Watch it brat, I’m supposed to be the smart mouth here. If you keep taking my lines I might as well just shut up.” Yasuke scratched at his shaggy hair which had grown so long by this point he needed to tie it back with a ponytail. He was slightly annoyed Medaka brought back a total stranger, let alone one without a wristband like they had back to their base. However, it was not like he could complain about wanting to protect a girl without sounding like a total hypocrite.

Yasuke decided to leave the room, because his presence probably only made things awkward anyway. He walked out into the hallway telling Medaka to call him if Tanaka’s condition changed at all.

He saw a door left ajar. He opened it to see a room no bigger than a closet. A featureless black room, that was lit by the glow of several tv screens. Kamukura stood sitting on a backwards chair, staring at all of them at once with his mismatched eyes.

“Well, that looks sane,” Yasuke said as he approached Kamukura from behind and then whacked him on the head as hard as he could with the manga volume. “Just sitting there staring at a screen all day not leaving your room, you’re no better than a neet. Who raised you?”

“You did,” Kamukura murmured back.

“And look what a shitty job I did. My highschool science project turned into a damn neet.”

“Komaeda… he’s in the game.”

“Yeah, I get it. He’s dying, and Tanaka-kun is dying, and we’re all living in a constant state of falling to pieces. It’s all so damn tragic. As your doctor I prescribe you a healthy dose of ‘get over yourself already’.”

“...”

“Oh, you’re not just a baby, you’re a sulky baby too.” Yasuke brushed a hand through his oily hair, pushing his long bangs back. “The world’s hope is completely hopeless. Who’s fault is this?”

“It’s your fault.”

“Yep, it is.”

Ever since Medaka had brought that girl before him, Kamukura felt unease. She bowed her head and introduced herself.

_Nanami. I was transferred to a hospital in this city a few months ago, but one day the power went out and I decided to leave my room and investigate. I’m looking for my younger brother, the only thing I can tell you is that he's a fool._

Green hair, long but tied up in the back with a bow that had a single flower on it. Her eyes a deep purple that had lost all of its color and now looked almost black. She wore traditional clothing, a long black robe, a purple checkered sash tied over it. Her sleeves were too long for her body and her hands disappeared underneath them, it gave her a distinctly childish look.

 _You don’t need to be so polite kid_. Yasuke said.

 _Oho, but I do._  She laughed. Just laughing took a lot out of her. You _see since my birth I’ve done nothing but trouble the people around me with my sickness, that is why I endeavor to offend the eyes of others as little as possible._

She had the bearings of a regal and noble lady, but her body was no more than that of a sick child. It was a contradiction. Kamukura only muttered an excuse and left the room, and in the few days that passed since then he could not stand to be in the same room as her for long.

Hinata’s eyes half lidded he looked back at Yasuke. “She smells like sickness, it’s so deep inside of her it’s in her bones, but I don’t feel any sympathy for her at all. Whenever she’s around, I just think of watching Komaeda waste away, and being unable to do something about it. How awful am I?”

“You’re so awful,” Yasuke was quick to scold him, “You’d be the worst person in the whole world if it weren’t for me. Hey, hey, I know I’m less significant than an ant to you but look at me when I’m talking to you. If you don’t want to be reminded of Komaeda, why do you spend all day staring at him?”

“He… he would be alone otherwise. He needs to know I’m watching him. That he’s not alone.”  
“He’s always alone, that’s what makes him Komaeda.” Yasuke grabbed at the tie around his neck, and yanked Kamukura’s head up so he had no choice but to make eye contact. “Listen, you’re not his doctor, I am. You have absolutely nothing to do with his sickness, I’m his shitty doctor that didn’t give a shit with him.”

Kamukura, his whole appearance colored in inky black, his hair falling to the floor and covering his face except for his eyes. He looked like a child that had been suffocated in ash. He looked like a cursed child who had been drowned in a river. Despite all the power he wielded, he looked so helpless.  
  
Kamukura did nothing but stare at those screens. The clockwork god, all of his gears had rusted up. He was not capable of moving any more. He was perfectly still. All the machinery inside of him busted. A clockwork heart, that Yasuke held so delicately between his fingertips. 

Yasuke almost wanted to cry, but he didn’t. He couldn’t cry. He just sat there with his hand in the pocket of his white lab coat, grasping at the only thing he had left to hold onto. He knew if Komaeda disappeared, if the person this hand belonged to disappeared, that even if the two of them knew that words like I can’t live without you were codependent nonsense, both of them would cease to be human. They would lose whatever small part of themselves they had regained. It was better to obsessively care about one thing than nothing at all.

Suddenly, the killing game broadcast that was playing on the several screens in front of then transitioned to a different scene. Was that a wipe? Were they editing this on adobe premiere instead of just live broadcasting it?

Kumagawa appeared, a shadow looming behind Rantaro. Matsuda idly wondered what bat shit thing that guy was going to pull next. It’s probably not nice to refer to him as ‘that guy’ since we’re both besties. Jeez, I’m such an unfriendly bastard. Matsuda thought to himself, and then amended it’s not funny to call us besties even as a joke.

As usual with Kumagawa a scene unfolded before Yasuke’s eyes completely different from what he expected. Kumagawa lunged forward pushing Rantaro out of the way. In his last few desperate seconds he curled his body over Rantaro’s eyes.

A single shot put ball crashed into Kumagawa’s head, cracking his skull and splashing blood across the floor. Yasuke waited for him to stand up and laugh it off with that shit eating grin on his face like he usually did. Kumagawa did not even move, he did not so much as twitch.

The screen cut to black. “Hey! Shitty River of Shit! Get up!” Yasuke’s swearing got less creative when he was genuinely mad. “You’re not allowed to die as long as Junko still needs you. You’re the one she needs not me so… so…”  
Yasuke was in a constant bad mood, but he never emoted anything other than just grump. He never laughed, and he never cried. In his memories, the only person he ever laughed or cried with was his childhood friend, but the girl he remembered was entirely different than Enoshima Junko.

That was why it was so startling it even caused Kamukura to widen his eyes in alarm when Yasuke started to laugh. It tricked out of him, like he was sick and spitting it up slowly, then he started to vomit laughter.

His long and delicate fingers touched his face, and traced the smile that had formed on his lips. He was smiling so wide, Kamukura thought his skin might tear from such an expression. A doctor sicker than his patients, dripping with sick laughter.

Yasuke’s nails dug into his face, and his laughter cut off dead in his throat. He made a face like he had forced himself to swallow something unpleasant. He was constantly swallowing his medicine without even a drop of sugar, no wonder life made him so bitter.

Suddenly his hands looked like they belonged to another. As if the reaper had reached out to caress his face, a reaper with long red nails that left red streaks in his shallow cheeks. “This is a joke isn’t it? It’s just another one of his jokes. He’s screwing with me again!”

Kamukura said nothing.

Yasuke peered at Kamukura in between the gaps of his fingers. His eyes looked scattered, refracted, as if this was Yasuke’s image being shown to him through a cracked mirror. “This is why I’m the worst. My best buddy Kumagawa just died, and I’m sad about it but also…”

I’m happy.

“I really don’t give a shit about anybody but myself do I? The first thing I thought was… if Junko gets sad over his death, she just might cling to me again.”

I don’t want her to get involved with anybody else.  
She said I didn’t need a family.  
All we need is each other.  
We’ll spend the rest of our lives looking after each other.  
She promised, she promised, she promised so why.

For a moment Yasuke was once again nothing more than a trembling little child, crying alone. Except, he could not cry anymore. The person who said he could cry if it was just the two of them was gone now.

In a flat voice lacking any emotion Kamukura replied. “You’re just as messed up as I am. We’re both so predictable…”

“You know what they say, God made man in his own image.”

“I know you’re already a mad scientist but do you have to develop a god complex? That’s so rote…”

“It was a Frankenstein reference! You know that thing we do together all the time.”

Kamukura tilted his head to the side looking like a curious child. “Oh, are you saying we have an inside joke? Like a couple of friends would have?”

“For the last time, I’m not your friend. I’m your doctor. It’s unethical to be friends with your patient.”

Kamukura would have rolled his eyes, but moving his face to make expressions took too much effort most of the time. He only wanted to act like a human with a non-boring personality when his friends were around. “Yes, because you care so much about ethics.”

Yasuke decided he would hate himself more later for the fact that he was so wrapped up in Junko he barely noticed Komaeda, who was the person who deserved to survive much more. He continued to neglect his only other patient. Onscreen, Komaeda sat underneath a tree.

He looked no different than a corpse hanging from one its branches. Swinging, swaying with the breeze back and forth. His feet unable to touch the ground. There was something ghost like, he seemed to just float there. Komaeda,started to cough terribly as if he had been holding it in inside of him until everybody else was looking away, the same way you would hold in a scream. As he coughed up blood and phlegm, a storm of cherry blossoms left his lips.

“Jeez, that’s Komaeda ain’t it? He looks like he’s dying. Uh… more than usual… I mean,” Sakakura Juzo scratched at his thick dark hair, feeling like an awkward giant looming over both of them.

Kamukura immediately glared at him. It was the most emotion he had shown in his eyes all day. Negative emotions were much easier to show then positive ones. “He’s just a dog who got thrown a bone by the elites because he had the boring talent of luck. I’m surprised you remember his name.”

“Other students called security on his ass like a thousand times because he kept stalking them, but that dumb kid never seemed to realize what he was doing. He only meant well.”

 

Kamukura raised his head. His long hair over his face, draped his entire expression in shadows. “You must be happy. One of the enemies of your master Munakata is dying right in front of your eyes.”

“Hey, I’m an asshole but I’m not that much of an asshole. It’s not like I want to watch some kid die.”

“You have desires other than being Munakata’s dog? How surprising.”

“Tch, I’ll kick both of your asses later but…” Juzo kicked the side of the doorway because he could not throw a punch. However, for a moment he considered dying worth it just to wipe the incredibly smug expression off of Hinata’s face.

“Excuse me, how did you get in here?” Yasuke asked.

“I told Kurokami I just wanted to talk, and she just let me in.”

“That damn airhead. She needs to stop forgetting we’re not all good people like she is. In fact, everyone here is an ass but her…”

Kamukura decided to give Yasuke a moment to himself, because ranting like that helped him blow off steam. He already knew why Medaka was more trusting of Juzo than the other adults. When that tower collapsed, Juzo threw his body over Gundham’s to protect him it was the only reason he was not killed while already in his weakened state.

Juzo looked away from the screen, as if seeing Komaeda suffer like that hurt too much to look at. Empathy was a terrible trait for the Ultimate Boxer who was only good for violence to have. No wonder he was such a disappointment of an Ultimate. “Shit… man, it’s just like Munakata when he was younger. Pure white, so cold looking it’s like he’s going to melt away at any moment.”

He remembered, the snow white Munakata.  
Lips as red as blood.  
He saw him overlayed on top of Komaeda, his body used to tremble the same way.  
Like a shiver felt with his whole body.  
The first time he saw Munakata, he could not stop thinking about how fragile he was.  
His pure white eyelashes.  
They fluttered when Juzo got close to his face on accident.  
Juzo blushed, but he did not.  
There was no color to his face at all.  
A colorless existence, so fragile.  
He still thought that.  
Munakata would keep shivering like he was cold if he stayed alone.  
He wanted to protect that fragile person.  
He wanted to be by his side to warm him up.  
He wanted him to never break, never change, to keep staying the Munakata he knew forever.  
But, that didn’t happen.

“I have someone I worry about that way too, even though he’s nothing but trouble…”

“No wonder Munakata considers you to be such a disappointment, you can’t even be a bad guy correctly,” Kamukura said again, making an expression that showed his teeth with his biting sarcasm. He had been slipping into Kamukura more and more lately, but nobody but Hinata could be this cocky.

“Shut up! I’m still going to beat both of your asses hard for what you did to Hope’s Peak. You’re right, I’m a no-good dog, that’s why I came here to beg.” He said, lowering his head suddenly. “Munakata’s injuries have only been getting worse. Tsumiki-san can’t nurse him because she’ll die. You both have medical related talents don’t you?”

Kamukura lifted his heel up. He showed off his black, pointed dress shoes. “That’s right, you can’t do anything but be violent, can you? Okay, I’ll let you beg me, why don’t you lick my shoe and maybe I’ll throw you a bone.”

When Yasuke saw Juzo lower his head, and bare his teeth like he was trying to force his pride down his throat, he decided he had enough.

Yasuke immediately grabbed Kamukura by the hair and yanked his head down, like he was a child he was forced to bow and apologize. “Hey, your inferiority complex is showing. Come on let’s go, it’s better than staring at a screen all day. The worst thing he can do is kill us, and even if he did I’d probably thank him.”

 

🦔

 

Munakata sat in bed, a shade paler than snow white. He looked like he was choking on the poison apple that he took a bite out of and was slowly dying. For a moment Kamukura was about to suggest that Juzo just find a prince to kiss him to wake him up, but he decided if he pushed too much Yasuke would lecture him again.

Munakata’s entire appearance looked ragged. His chest rose and fall in shallow breaths. A struggle just to breathe. Half of his face was covered in bandages to seal up the wound that Kamukura had given his eye, and his other eye was closed as he struggled with sleep.

 

Seeing the strong Munakata lie so utterly broken in front of him, Kamukura was reminded again how compared to him everybody else was like fragile glass. People were so easy to pull apart like this. Every time he reached out to touch them it happened. It was like the toys Matsuda always snuck into his pure white room, when he got bored of them he left them broken on the floor around him. He bit his own lip to suppress his nausea. He stood over Munakata and reached forward, examining his body with his eyes, taking in every detail.

“Cold sweats. Shakes. His condition is worsening. It could be an infection in one of his wounds, or… withdrawal symptoms.”

“What…? Munakata hasn’t needed to be on medication for years.”

“She was expelled but she was at the academy the same time you were. Kimura Seiko. Her drugs were known to be particularly addictive. Addiction, how tepid a symptom of the human condition…”

Kamukura lost interest halfway through his explanation. Addiction just reminded him of Enoshima Junko.

“Sa… ka… ku...ra…”

Munakata as he woke up from his troubled sleep, his pure white eyelashes fluttered as he called out the name of one person.

Juzo immediately moved to his side. “Hey man, I’m here. It’s not like there’s anywhere else I’d be but next to you.”

Munakata, forgetting everything else just smiled reassured by Juzo’s presence. As if all the distance between them had disappeared. As if all the time between them was nothing, and they were still the same as the moment they had first met at Hope’s Peak and promised to always stay by each other’s side.

In this tangled up and twisted moment, some part of Juzo wondered if Munakata desired the same thing as he did, to just go back to those days where they could always be together and never leave them again.

He reached out to take Munakata’s hand, and immediately felt how cold it was, as his long feminine fingers curled around Juzo’s. That moment between the two of them. Broke apart. Shattered. The moment Munakata saw a familiar silhouette in the background with mismatched eyes, just watching him.

“Sakakura! What happened? How did despair get in here?”

“W-wait…”

“You don’t know what that monster did, do you? He put his hands around the neck of Soushun Murasme and squeezed until he suffocated.” Munakata said, glaring at Yasuke.

Yasuke did not even bother to try defending himself. The two of them agreed to help Munakata, but neither of them were good people.

Munakata grabbed for the sword which was resting against his bedside table, and immediately picked it up trying to unsheathe it. He tried to force himself out of the bed. As he moved so suddenly, Juzo saw pink staining the bandages on his side as one of his wounds reopened.

Pure white snow.  
Stained by blood.  
Soaked all the way through.  
A single flower blooming in the middle of a field of snow.  
It grows up towards the sky reaching out for warmth.  
A fragile flower.  
Trampled by snowfall.  
It dies, cold and alone, suffocated by pure white.

Sakakura immediately threw his body on top of Munakata, pushing him down to stop him from moving. “Careful Munakata, you’re going to open your wounds! We can kill both of them when your strength returns.”

Munakata struggled against Sakakura with all that he head. His frail body frame screamed against him. Juzo heard creeks, in his arm bones, his leg bones, his hips, the strain of it all was too much for fragile Munakata. Munakata who always tried so hard to look strong, just like he did. Munakata who was weaker than anybody else.

No, Munakata was not like him.  
Munakata was better. He was strong.  
This was his fault for upsetting him.

“W-why are they here? You… you betrayed me didn’t you?” Munakata asked, his voice dripping with mania. Cold fingers curled around his heart and gripped him, he felt cold blood rush through his veins.

“Munakata, I would never…”

Betray you.  
But I did.  
I betrayed you over something as stupid as my own pride.  
The fragile Munakata. The pure white existence. The boy who could melt away easily. The pure days of their youth, before they both entered the adult world surrounded with impurities. Juzo wanted to protect him more than anybody else.

So why…  
Why did I have to be the one that broke you?

He smashed Munakata to pieces. He pushed Munakata off the side of a cliff, and watched his head dash against the rocks, and the waves break his body against the shore over and over again. The person he loved was dead. Not a lover’s suicide, he died all alone, murdered by his closest friend. A lover’s betrayal. A lover’s murder. He died, and I did not. Juzo denied that painful reality, that the person he never wanted to change had changed the most with every fiber of his being.

Juzo held his body over Munakata’s, wondering why the two of them could only get close if they were hurting each other like this. Why couldn’t they just hold each other?

“Well shit this is awkward,” Yasuke remarked as irreverent as ever. “Guess I’m just gonna leave. See ya later, or uh, kill ya later I guess.”

Kamukura silently moved to follow him.  
After they left out the window (Kamukura carrying Yasuke and holding onto his hand despite his protests), the door suddenly flew open.

Yukizome appeared suddenly. She rushed to his other side, and placed her hands on the sides of his face. “Kyosuke, look at me.”

“Yukizome?”

“Jeez, when are you going to call me Chisa already? You’re such a cold guy.”

Juzo hated it, the way Munakata was calmed by her touch in a way he never was with Juzo.  
Because Juzo could only hold him roughly.  
And his hands could never hold anything to begin with.  
He hated himself too, for loathing the way he looked at her.  
For being so petty about the happiness of his two closest friends.

“Kyosuke. You have to stay still if you want to get better.”

She treated as gently as one of her students. Yukizome seemed born to take care of others. Juzo let go of Munakata as he finally calmed down and stopped trying to escape his bed.

Chisa touched a finger to her lips, and winked at Juzo. “Don’t make such a sad face, big guy. It’s not your fault, you’re not exactly the type to play nurse.”

He only knew how to be violent.

She smiled at him pleasantly. “It’s fine, why don’t I watch over him? A house maid is a pretty useless talent, but I’m good at looking after other people’s needs at least. I don’t mind at all.”

“Yeah, sorry I just made him worse,” Juzo said roughly, as he pushed past her and briskly walked out of the room.

When Kamukura touched the ground, he suddenly heard a loud beeping. He set Yasuke down still holding onto his hand, and looked at the bangle around his wrist. The digital display changed as another set of letters scrolled across.

Week Two Mission.  
Kill Nanami.  
Fail and face erasure.

Yasuke and Kamukura hurried their way back to the hospital. By the time they did, the window was already left open, and Nanami and Medaka were nowhere to be found.

Yasuke raised his head looking up at the unfamiliar white ceiling, his hair falling in front of his eyes. He looked like he was waiting for rain to fall. “Damnit, she’s really going to try to rescue that kid even if it means we might all die as a result? She’s just too good… that idiot…”

There he was getting all worked up about protecting a girl again. Yasuke really needed to quit his bad habits, like a tobacco addiction it was only slowly killing him.


	16. A Girl's Love is Stronger Than Any Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter about girl's in love, what could be better?

 

**Chapter Two: God Punishes the Elite** **  
** **Day One: Part Two** **  
  
**

_ “Nobody loves me.”  _ _  
_ _ “You’ll be better off without me.” _ _  
_ _ “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.”  _

 

Those were the thoughts that flashed through Tsumiki Mikan’s mind as she saw the tower crumble on top of her. For a medical professional, no for someone who had never been loved in her life once she seemed to be a little too willing to die.    
  
It even surprised Tsumiki herself. She had no self image. When she looked into the eyes of others, she saw nobody else reflecting back. They all ignored her, they did not hate her, or pity her. That was why Tsumiki was constantly learning new things about herself. 

  
She was overly sensitive to others, and yet that was insensitive in a way. She was overly conscious of herself, and yet she was lacking self awareness in a way. 

 

Even though she promised Kumagawa-kun that she would try to live and believe that someday, but she had forgotten that already. It was Kumagawa’s fault. He made that promise, and then he left her side again. When people disappeared from her view, she forgot their faces.    
  
She wasn’t a kind hearted human being after all. When there was someone right in front of her suffering, she wanted to do everything she could to help them. But Komaeda often told her about how her talents could be used to improve the field of medicine and save the sick and suffering of the world.    
  
When she nodded with tears in her eyes, and told Komaeda she wanted her talents to help all of those people, she realized how hollow their conversation was. Neither of them could care any less about helping faceless strangers. If they were not right in front of her, if she could not feel their warmth, the warmth of their embrace, the warmth of their blood on her hands, the warmth of her covered in her own blood from their abuse, any one was fine with her. If she could not feel their warmth, then all of her feelings went cold, and she forgot. 

 

Ever since she met Komaeda she knew, she had no understanding of other people but she at least had a sense for people that were like her.   
They had the same scent.   
Rubbing alcohol, the aseptic smell of carbolic acid, the distracting smell of flowers, iodoform, they both had a hospital-like smell about them. They were dirtier than everybody else, but they smelled too clean, almost sterile.    
He was an ill boy.   
She was an ill girl.    
That was why she knew him.    
The only thing shared between them was sickness.    
However, Komaeda was not here either so she had forgotten about him too. 

 

She looked up at a broken piece of concrete falling towards her head. She swallowed all of her feelings. It felt like swallowing colorful fabric, sewed together with red thread and adorned with cute buttons. She always wanted to believe there was something beautiful inside of her, despite her ugly body always covered in wounds. She always existed in a wounded state, she was always bandaging herself up on her own, if she were to get her head crushed by the concrete it would not be any different. Just one more wound. It was only a body. It was only breaking a little more, and she knew she had been broken a long time ago.    
  
Perhaps when she cracked open, her insides would spill out, red yarn in tangles, fabric of all sorts of colors, and people would see that she was beautiful all along. She would be the tragic suffering girl protagonist! Everyone would feel sorry for how they treated her in life! They could all forget about her when she was alive, but if she died this way an innocent victim of this cruel game then she would have so much individuality after her death!

 

The love she could never get when she was alive, would belong to her forever after death.    
Perhaps if Kumagawa saw her and felt guilt over her death.    
If he was unable to forgive himself for not being able to save her.   
He would stop thinking he could love.   
He would no longer be able to bring himself to love Enoshima Junko.    
Leaves, plants, flowers, all of them would spring from her corpse, and a vine of thorns would wrap around Kumagawa Misogi’s heart. She could not love him properly but she could be a poisonous thorn forever embedded in his heart.    
Her death would interfere in their love story.    
No matter how hard she tried she could not find happiness, happiness never lasted, but misery did. The feelings of love would eventually fade away too, but the scars, mental and physical would not.    
Maybe, Kumagawa would be so guilty he would even kill himself to join her.    
  
_ Ah, that’s right what I wanted wasn’t love at all was it? _   
She realized the truth as a lantern spun in front of her eyes. She recalled no precious memories because she did not have any, all of the pain, and all of the pleasure she was easily able to forget about it soon after it happened when she stopped feeling the warmth of their touch.    
  


She thought it would be a miracle if someone loved her, but… even if she was loved she was still a loser. The loser in love is the one who lets their heart ruled by it. Love would crumble the moment she reached out her hand to touch it, but when people don’t touch the love eventually dies away. Love was only something she would continue to lose, and lose, and lose.

  
That’s why what she wanted was not to love and be loved, but to hold love prisoner. To wrap her up in bandages, and tied to her. To put her heart in a birdcage far away from everything else. To chain love to a hospital bed. She wanted a terminal lovesickness, for love to be an incurable disease that never went away. 

 

Then she would never have to hear those words from Junko’s mouth again.    
  
_ “I don’t give a damn about you.”  _

 

It’s not that she was incapable of loving everybody.   
She just didn’t love her.   
God did exist.   
He just didn’t like her very much.    
  


_ To make sure that you loved me forever.  _   
_ I just want to keep loving the person I love forever, what’s so wrong with that?  _ _  
_ _ I’m not a loser in love.  _ _  
_ _ I was a lover lost from the beginning.  _

 

Tsumiki Mikan smiled.    
The absolutely sickening smile of an ill girl. Suddenly above her the debris that were supposed to fall on her head and crush her crumbled into pieces. She suddenly could not breathe as if the air was rotting around her. 

  
Emukae Mukae was smiling down at her. She jumped up and pushed Tsumiki out of the way with her feet, and held her hand up above her heads causing the rest of the debris to break away. Tsumiki got close enough to brush against her just a moment and she recognized a familiar scent.    
  
The scent of sickness clung to her. The way her and Komaeda smelled, the pitiful smell of a weak person clinging to life with everything they had. 

  
“What do you think you’re doing? You think you can go off and die on your own, you really must think you’re something special don’t you? Just because you’re an elite you got a big head!” 

  
“U-um… I’m sorry for not thinking about you… it was inconsiderate of me!” It was Mikan’s reflex to apologize, even though she did not understand this situation at all. How useless of her she could not even die properly. “I d-don’t think I’m special or anything. B-but, if you hate me for looking down on you then I probably was, I definitely deserve it…I’m an arrogant and filthy girl who thinks too much of herself.” 

  
Gosh, she was exhausted already.   
If other people thought dealing with her was tiring, then imagine how tired of herself she must be? 

  
  
  
  


  
  
“You’re right! Even if I’m the most forgettable person in the world, even if I don’t have a trace of individuality, even though I’m a talentless defective product, a hated minus, I’m going to kill you. So, I’m a special person to you.”  Emukae raised her voice as she got closer and closer to Tsumiki. She held her hands out to touch Tsumiki’s face, but stopped just short of making contact. “That means you’re not allowed to die until I’ve decided to kill you. If you let anybody else kill you, then that counts as infidelity? Okay? Okay?” 

 

“O-okay…?” Mikan felt a fleeting moment of self awareness.  _ Even I think this girl is hysterical, that’s impressive. _ _  
_ _  
_ “Tch, you’re such a careless and clumsy girl.”   
  
“Y-yeah, that’s right. Hehe, I’m just a clusmy mess, and I’m soooo careless.”    
  
“Stop agreeing when I’m insulting you,” Emukae snapped at her.    
  
“I’m sorry my own self loathing is getting in the way of you hating me!”    
  
“So annoying! Gosh we get it miss self esteem, you love yourself soooo much!”    
  
“Um, that’s n-not what I said at all… but okay, I guess I’ll apologize for that too. I w-was totally arrogant and everything.”   
  
“There’s just no helping someone like you.”   
  
“Y-yep, I’m a completely helpless girl… it’s s-so annoying how much I make trouble for others, I’m even inconveniencing my killer like this.”    
  
“It can’t be helped.” She brought her hands to her forehead, and her skin slightly singed at the contact. Her skin was wrinkled in a few areas, especially underneath her eyes. She looked like she was slowly rotting away, and yet there was something oddly beautiful about her. She was a flower amongst corpses. “I’ll have to make you mine. Your life is mine until I kill you.”    
  
“Eh… eh?”  _ How am I the sane one here? I’m not suited to such a role! Somebody else show up right now and be the sane one. Th-this is too much responsibility for me. _ Mikan had another fleeting moment of self awareness. 

  
Tsumiki’s brush with death did not make her feel anything at all. If anything she felt disappointment, like the feeling of coming down and crashing from a high. She had a lot of intense feelings at the moment, but they had all gone cold now and she went back to being numb. 

  
Mikan did not really know how to converse with others. Most of the things she said were a reflex to pacify everyone around her. In most situations she just wanted to make the pain stop, wherever it was coming from. The same way she once placated and begged her parents to stop by showering them in compliments. 

 

Most people got annoyed by her reactionary way of talking, so when they talked back to her they either kindly and softly pushed her away, or they tried to drive her off with cruel insults. Either way the result was the same to her, she was too much of a problem for others to even deal with.    
  
There were some kind people like Chiaki, who saw her wounds and soothe her. Their kind words were just bandages to her. They just wanted to slap them on so they had felt like they had helped someone. Eventually, the bandages would peel off and the wounds would still be there. 

 

That was why it was strange, ever since that moment Emukae had been stalking her. Because she planned to kill her of course. Rather than a red string tied around her finger, it was tied around her neck, and Emukae held onto the other.    
  
It had only been a few days since then, but the two of them talked every day. She had no idea why Emukae was so eager to constantly talk to her, she was someone to be tolerated, to be put up with, after all. 

 

“Like I said, you belong to me miss talented. So you’ll be helping me with Matsuda-san.”    
  
“W-why do you keep calling me Miss Talented? D-do you resent me fo something?” Mikan asked, only to be met with another glare.    
  
“Of course, all the suffering in my life it was your fault wasn’t it?”   
  
“Y-yep it was! I was sabotaging your whole life. I’m so sorry. You must hate me.” What was she agreeing too? She didn’t even know who this girl was. She remembered Emukae had ranted about Kumagawa at her, but to be honest she did not really care so she had forgotten about it. “Y-you like Matsuda-kun, right?”    
  
Mikan changed the subject. She was terrible at coming up with things to talk about, but she thought girls discussing their crushes was a normal enough topic.    
  
“Yup! I totally love him!”    
  
Emukae tossed her head around.    
Her pink hair.    
The color of blood.    
Looked washed out and withered.    
Like decaying flower petals, clinging to the bud.    
  
“That’s why I’m gonna kill him! Totally kill him!”    
  
“I s-see…” Mikan stuttered, not knowing what else to say. Oh, she hoped her silence did not make things awkward. She was talking with a remorseless killer and somehow that was what she worried about.    
  
“I’m going to kill Matsuda-san’s, and Kumagawa-san’s girlfriend, and uhhh you… whatever your name is…”    
  
“You’re stalking me and you can’t even go through the trouble of remembering my name!” Mikan whined after her.   
  
Emukae was not smart.   
She was useless and talentless just like she claimed.    
She was hopelessly lacking in brain matter.   
It had all rotted away.    
  


Mikan still did not want to be forgotten by such a person. Gosh, she was needy with absolutely everybody. “Hey, Emukae.”   
  
“There’s no need for us to be unfriendly! You belong to me after all, feel free to call me Mukae.”   
  
“We can’t be on a first name basis if you don’t even remember my name?” 

  
“Why would I remember the name of such a forgettable girl?”   
  
“Th-that’s right, I am forgettable,” Tsumiki tried again. “Hey, Mukae. If you were able to go back to being by Kumagawa-kuns side, would you like to?”   
  
“Nope.”   
  
“Even if you could be by Kumagawa-kuns side, and date the boy you love at the same time?” 

 

“Yup.”    
  
“W-wait why? I thought you were doing all of this right because Kumagawa-kun abandoned you? You can’t even yandere right!” Mikan suddenly felt the confidence to insult her, because she got the feeling that this girl was somehow more insane than she was.    
  
“I’m fine with my love not being answered anymore. If I could keep loving someone forever with no answer… don’t you think that’s happier than loving each other, Miss What’s-Her-Name?” 

 

_ “I don’t give a damn about you.” _ _  
_ _ That’s right, there was somebody I loved. _ _  
_ _ She didn’t love me back. _ _  
_ _ But she could love somebody else. _ _  
_ _ I had fallen in love and lost love.  _

 

“You’re right…” Tsumiki’s expression darkened. She pulled at the bandages that reached down one of her arms, and played with them for a moment. She wondered if she pulled these bandages off would she unravel too?    
  
“But still if I can help it I want to make Matsuda-san stop loving Enoshima-san before he dies by my hand. I want his last thoughts to be how much he hates me, not how much he loves her.” 

 

“I’m helpless but you’re more of a lost cause then I am,” Tsumiki said, her expression going flat. 

 

“What a wonderful thing for you to say.”   
  
“W-what? I’m insulting you, you know!”   
  
“You’re a really kind person!” She touched a finger to her cracked lips, a scar running through them and smiled again. “Isn’t it just the best feeling in the whole world when someone else looks down on you?” 

 

The two of them were walking along the building that Munakata made the hideout for his faction. Emukae could easily sneak in and out, and nobody paid much attention to Mikan so she was able to go talk with her without much trouble. Emukae suddenly turned around to face her. There was a bow tied around her waist, and another red bow tied around her neck. “Hehe, that’s why I need you. You’re an expert on making other people feel sorry for you. Then, you cling to them and beg them to protect you. That’s exactly what Matsuda-san is weak to.”    
  
“No way. A clumsy, slowpoke like me manipulating someone…? Th-that’s completely out of the question.” Tsumiki embraced herself, her fingers digging into her skin. She wanted to break her skin and cover herself in more wounds, so she would have to bandage herself up more. If someone saw how hurt she was, they would want to touch even someone as repulsive as her. “I d-don’t think Matsuda-san would want to help me, or pity me, I’ll probably just annoy him and make him hate me. That’s usually what happens anyway because I’m so-”   
  
“Cute.”   
  
“Huh?”

Emukae suddenly reached forward to carress her face again, but stopped herself just before. Tsumiki Mikan read the command on her bangle.  _ Cannot touch anybody else with your hands.  _ “You’re really adorable when you act all pitiable like that. There’s no way anyone would dislike such a cute girl!” 

 

Tsumiki felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips.  _ Being looked down on by others really is the best! There’s no better feeling than this.  _   
  
“But, I’d much rather see your ugliness.”

 

“Huh? Oh s-sorry for not being a good conversational partner. I can’t react to this in a very funny way, I’m sure if Kumagawa-kun were here he would be much better…”    
  


_ Embracing ugliness. _ _  
_ _ Despising cuteness.  _ _  
_ This girl seemed to be imitating Kumagawa after all. Perhaps, she believed all of Kumagawa’s lies and took them for reality, or perhaps she no longer cared to differentiate between reality and the lie.    
  
“The way you act, I bet you think if that person loved me, I would be saved by their love. It’s like you’re desperately begging all the time,  _ somebody, anybody, love me. _ ”   
  
“Th-there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be loved.”   
  
“But, even if someone truly loved you. If the person you liked noticed you and turned their head your way, it wouldn’t make a difference to you. You’re like a vase with a crack in it, no matter how much love is poured into you, the water’s all going to drain out. Your flower is only going to wither.”

 

_ Love changes nothing.  _   
Emukae said, and for the first time she could remember Tsumiki Mikan saw herself reflected in the eyes of another. She hated it, the warped and cracked mirror she saw herself in. 

 

“Th-that’s wrong!”   
  
“I am not wrong, or rather we’re both wrong, aren't we? If you were just a little more confident, you would be like me.” 

 

Tsumiki gripped the sides of her head.   
If she wrapped her head in a bandage, would the sickness in her head finally be healed?   
_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.  _   
She repeated the apology in her head over and over again, but the pain did not go away.    
  
“You wanted to kill Enoshima Junko from the moment you met her, didn’t you?” 

 

_ I’m sorry.  _   
  
“It’s okay. Love is a very comforting thing isn’t it? A girl’s love is stronger than any pain.” As she said that Tsumiki saw Emukae reach underneath the skirt of her uniform and draw up a knife. Her fingers closed around the knife, and the blade cut her fingers causing her hand to turn a bloody pink while at the same time she disintegrated the knife. “I just think you should comfort yourself, instead of forcing everybody to comfort you by acting like a cute helpless animal. You’re an ugly girl who only uses other people for comfort, so you should just be ugly.”    
  
“You’re holding that knife wrong.”    
  
“Huh?”   
  
“It’s unsafe to hold it like that. You cut yourself j-just now.” Mikan grabbed her by the wrist. Apparently, she could be touched by others, she just could not touch them, or maybe as long as she did not touch Emukae’s hand. “You should bandage up this whole arm.”   
  
Cuts similar to the ones she just made on her fingers covered her whole arm, most of them went untreated. Mikan could not bandage them up for her because that would count as using her talent.

  
Emukae stared at her blankly for a moment. “You’re weird, Mikan.”   
  
“I-I’m sorry for being weird!” 

 

🦔

 

Yukizome Chisa held Munakata’s hand as he lay in bed. She gently stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, hoping she could warm him up even a little bit. 

 

The bangle on her wrist was an inconvenient chain. She had always been the peacemaker of her friends. After all, her two best friends in the whole world were two hopeless boys who did not know how to speak their feelings so she had to get in between things and constantly understand both of them and say the words that they could not say. ‘

 

At the same time, the chain around her wrist felt oddly freeing. She was able to tell Juzo honestly, that he was no good when it came to calming Munakata down. That she was the only one who could take care of him. Speaking those feelings finally, felt liberating in a way.    
  
Munakata was still sleeping. Just like a loyal woman she had been holding his hand the entire time, trying to steady him in his sleep. If she was not allowed to lie though, then she was not a loyal woman at all. She was not a selfless caretaker. She slowly crawled in bed next to him, laying on top of the blankets that he was under.    
  
She nestled close to feel his warmth, but she only felt colder.    
They had been like this ever since High School, Munakata was wrapped around her finger, he would do anything for her, and yet he was so far away.    
  
_ I don’t have your resourcefulness, nor your ingenuity, and our families don’t even merit comparison. I still remember clearly, when we first met, you hadn’t the slightest interest in me.  _

 

She still remembered, a brown haired girl with an unremarkable face that was always staring at her shoes. The kind of girl that could be found anywhere. In middle school, not a single person thought she would ever become someone who was called an “Ultimate Talent’. If her classmates from Middle School saw her now they would not even recognize her. They would treat her like she was an entirely different girl.    
  
She knew that for sure, because when she first met Munakata it was in middle school and he did not love her. He did not even look at her.    
When they met in high school, he did.   
But, he did not remember at her at all. He spoke to her like she was meeting him for the first time, when they had talked several times before this. 

  
Even in middle school Munakata was a student council president. His silver hair, and his kind smile, he was completely unforgettable. He spent all of his time taking care of the students underneath him.    
  
Chisa went to him several times because she was being bullied. Every time he stood up for her like a knight in white armor. However, when they passed each other in the hallway he did not even look her way. When she bumped into him on accident, he just muttered an apology and kept walking. 

  
Silver hair. Silver eyes. A colorless existence. Like fallen snow. Like the shine of a sword.    
She fell in love with him like he was the main character of a romantic manga.   
He may as well have been a fictional character though, because they did not exist in the same world. There was a serious gap between them, a gulf so wide if she tried to jump it she would just fall in, and then keep falling forever. 

 

She knew she would never turn his head her way for a nobody like her. That was why, she needed to become a somebody. 

 

The only thing Chisa was ever good at was housework. Chisa had herself the oldest, plus several other siblings. She was never doted on much, and she felt a bit faceless surrounded by her many siblings. Yet she was held responsible for taking care of them. Ever since she was young Chisa raised herself, she wondered if that was the reason she never developed much of a personality was because she was just one of many. The self she showed around her siblings was at least different than the shy, and withdrawn self she showed at school.   
  
Munakata never noticed her, because he was an ideal prince from fantasy. She just needed to become an ideal as well. She could take care of a household and clean it all on her own. She could become the ideal wife.    
  
So she worked hard.    
Harder than she ever had before. 

She began taking jobs after school, and balancing that with studying every night.    
She started taking care of her classmates.   
She acted like the mother she never had.    
Years of bullying left her sensitive to other people.   
She was good at telling when they were in a bad mood and could bend herself to suit them.   
Their needs.   
Overwrote her needs.   
She became what everybody else wanted of her.   
It overwrote her original personality.    
  
To get the boy who never noticed her to look her way. On the final year of their middleschool, just once she scored higher in the exams than he did. He would never know how happy she was, when she finally beat him at her best.    
  
She felt a glimmer of hope in his chest.   
That just maybe they could one day stand on equal footing.    
When they were both recruited for Hope’s Peak, she dyed her hair red and went to meet him on the first day of class. He greeted her like a stranger, and finally smiled at her when he saw her. 

  
Yet, in high school they did not become lovers. She never confessed her love even once. She was too afraid, that if he pulled away that no amount of effort would be able to close the gap between us. It was like Komaeda always said, people who were able to shine in this world were born with it.   
  
She was just a good enough actor that she could pretend to be the princess to Munakata’s prince forever, but she could never truly be his equal because she had been born below him from the start and only climbed her way up.

When Komaeda said those words, she slapped him hard across the face. She did not want to hear a reminder of what she already knew, she wanted to continue in her fantasy.    
  
It was a tragic fairy tale love. They could both love each other, but they could never become lovers. She was too afraid of losing the love she had worked so hard for. Being Munakata’s ideal woman had become everything to her, if he ever pushed her away she would crumble.    
  
That was why she locked his heart up in a bird cage.    
That was why, she forced him to be her prince forever.    
As long as their love existed in this game of make believe between them, they could keep playing at their fairy tale love forever. It never had to end.    
That was why she thought it was enough to just to stay by his side forever.    
  
A pair of red nails grabbed her by the ankle, and pulled her. They wrenched her away from the embrace of her lover. Enoshima Junko destroyed her only place of belonging in this world. She broke it beyond repair.    
  
She still remembered. Her hands tied behind a chair. Pain sending all through her body like tremors. Cuts on her flesh. She wanted to scream but her throat had already gone hoarse from her cries of pain.    
  
Her fingernails pulled off one by one, and nothing left but the bleeding nubs. She wanted Munakata to come save her, she kept hoping and hoping but nobody came. The only voice she heard, the only face she saw, Enoshima Junko.    
  
“Hey, I’m getting bored of this. It’s just like  _ Ow! Please stop hurting me Enoshima-sama! Please, I’ll do whatever you want, mistress!  _ Couldn’t you suffer a little more creatively for me at least? Hey, hey, tell me a story?”    
  
“I’ve hated Kyosuke since we were children.”    
  
“Hmm…” 

 

“He’s talented, beautiful, popular with everyone. I was jealous of Kyosuke.”    
  
“Hmmm…”   
  
“That’s right, I did love him… but, I also wanted to become something precious he could never lose! That’s all I wanted! And so… And so…”   
  
“Interesting…”   
  
  
“It’s not that! Kyosuke was always so kind to me. But, he was just making a fool of me. I thought he was being kind to me out of sympathy for not being great as he was. That’s what I thought,  it seemed so pathetic. That’s why I wanted to change our relationship!”   
  
“Yup. P much. Classic pining girl with a crush trope.”    
  


“I just wanted to become someone worthy of him. But, what I did made me feel even more pathetic than before! I wanted him to want me for me! That was my hope!” 

 

“You sure about that honey? It kind of sounds like that’s your despair to me. Not to judge you. Jk, I’m totally judging you.” 

 

Enoshima’s red nails reached forward and embraced her cheek softly. Then she felt it, a metal rod driven into the back of her head. The image of Kyosuke, her prince, burned up in front of her. She felt something hot burn her. She was going to melt away like this. 

 

Then, all the pain stopped.    
Kumagawa Misogi stood in front of her, on top of Ikusaba Mukuro’s unconscious body.    
She hated him for saving her.   
She hated that it was not Munakata who saved her in the end.   
If her prince had come, maybe she would not have been this broken.    
  
That was right she had always been too faced but this made it worse. She wore her smile like a mask in front of Munakata, while on the inside she had been broken by Enoshima’s torture of her. No matter how hard she tried she could not go back to the girl who wanted nothing more than to be by his side. Now that she knew her despair it was impossible to look away from it.    
  
Munakata would never want such a horribly broken woman, so she hid it all again. In the present day, she opened her eyes looking at Munakata’s frail face as she slept. She reached forward and caressed his face. If only it was possible to make the distance between them nothing.   
  
Even lying next to each other in bed, they were distant.    
Her eyes watered with tears. She was sad all the time, but she never cried in front of Munakata once. Even though she wanted nothing more than for him to embrace her, and kiss all of her tears away like a prince would.    
  
Then roses could sprout from where her tears had fallen.    
  
“You know, Sakakura loves you, Kyosuke. You’re so obligious. ”   
  
She giggled girlishly, covering her face with her other hand. Coquetteish. Innocent. In a way she could never be again.   
  
“Oh, what to do. Knowing my best friend’s secret makes me so happy I can’t stand it!”   
  
She touched her lips with a single finger.    
  
“I can just see him, alone and miserable looking at your picture.”   
  
She cooed softly.    
Like she truly pitied him.   
It felt so good pitying others instead of being the one who was pitied.

 

_ No!  _ _  
_ _ It’s no use! _

 

“Poor Juzo.”   
  
_ It’s never any use!  _   
  
“Poor pathetic Juzo.”   
  
_ Why do you look at me like that? Why did you come to love me, Kyosuke? Why?  _   
_ Why did things turn out this way? _   
  
“I see.”    
  
Enoshima Junko’s voice hummed behind her.    
  
“Looks like you have no choice but to give into despair.”   
  
Except Enoshima Junko was not here, she was only hallucinating again. Chisa sat up immediately, and rubbed her eyes trying to get the illusions to vanish. She recalled at the worst possible times, her torture, the way she was broken. The way she betrayed Munakata. 

 

_ Why do you love someone who betrayed you? _   
  
She said, looking at Munakata’s face in his bed. If only he would never wake up. If only he would become sleeping beauty rather than the prince. She thought she fell in love with the prince, but maybe what she really fell in love with was this helpless boy. He looked really cute like this. 

 

She stood up, and pulled at her apron. She needed to put her face back on. Otherwise they would all see. Her mania disappeared, and she became a kind and caring teacher once more. Someone who only existed to take care of others. 

If only Enoshima Junko had not ruined everything.   
She had truly loved him.   
She had once truly wanted to become happy by his side.    
  
She held her skirt up as she walked out of the room. She expected to see Juzo again, he was so clingy with Munakata after all. Instead she saw Kurokami Medaka, hanging against the wall. There was a girl with a deathly pale pallor holding onto her back.    
  
“Medaka-chan, is something wrong?” Chisa said, greeting her like normal. 

 

“Yukizome-sensei, you’re a teacher right? Then you need to protect this child. I’ll surrender to Munakata-senpai, I’ll do anything so please take her to your side and protect her.” 

 

Chisa’s eyes watered. She said a familiar phrase that Nanami had heard several times before. “That poor girl. She’s suffering so much…” Chisa looked at the message on her bangle and instantly deduced this was the Nanami that had to die this round. She wiped her tears away. “But, Kyosuke’s in no condition to take care of her…”   
  
She saw it when she was tortured.   
Her own blood fell from her body. She bled. She could no longer be a pure white flower like Munakata. Carnations watered with blood. Bloody carnations, twisted and bloomed into bright red spider lilies.    
  
Medaka’s eyes shook in disbelief, the kind that questioned the reality in front of her. “Are you saying you can’t help her…?”    
  
“You should run away now before Kyosuke wakes up.”

  
“Y-you’re a teacher. This is no time for jokes. I’m… terrible at joking around anyway.”    
  
She gently, and kindly, turned her away. When Nanami coughed behind her back, Chisa averted her eyes. “I am a teacher. That’s why I’ve got my hands full taking care of all these kids. I’m sorry if any of my students trouble you.”   
  
“Your hands are empty,” Medaka said.    
  
She got angry.   
She cried.   
She was happy.    
She had an aura unmistakably like Enoshima Junko, and yet she felt so much. 

_ What a weird girl,  _ Chisa thought. 

  
  
From around the corner of the hallway, both Emukae and Mikan were watching. Emukae looked back at Mikan with a smile. “You probably thought everyone else was so much more beautiful than you were, but that was wrong. You’re ugly, but so is everybody else.”    
  
“Y-yukisome-sensei!”   
  
“Your teacher is quite ugly don’t you think?” Emukae grabbed her sleeve and pulled it down. The cuts that covered her entire wrist. She was wounded just like Mikan was, she just never covered herself up in bandages. She let the wounds get infected. She let it fester. She let it all rot away. “She taught me in the reserve course for six months, but the next time I saw her she did not even recognize my face.”    
  
“I-I’m sorry,” Tsumiki Mikan had no idea why she was apologizing. She just felt sad for this girl, she felt someone should apologize for how hurt Emukae was.    
  
“She wanted to play house with all of her students. She wanted to play at being a mother. If you take care of everybody, then you don’t have to be close to anybody. Hey, Mikan, did that lady ever once help you or did she just slap a bandaid on your wound.” 

  
Tsumiki Mikan trembled, her whole body was covered in bandages and yet she never healed. 

When Emukae looked at Chisa Yukizome who wrote her entire personality around the person she loved, until all of her love, and all of her hate belonged solely to that person, her heart squeezed in agony. She could not help but think of her precious Matsuda-san. 

  
“No matter how hard she tries to be loved, she’s just unlovable. No matter how much she tries to be beautiful, she can only hide her ugliness. But that’s fine, because everybody else is ugly too.”   
  
“N-no, it’s not like that.” Mikan reached forward and grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her away from the hallway and out the door. This was the first time Mikan ever took the initiative before, she wanted to be helpless, to depend on others for everything. “Don’t say that. It’s way too sad. Don’t say sad things like that all the time! What happened to you to give you such a low opinion of other people?” 

Emukae merely cocked her head to the side, a puzzled expression on her face. She just let herself be dragged along the wrist. “You really are a weird girl, Mikan.”   
  
“I’m sorry for being weird!” 


	17. Princess of Nothing

When performing plastic surgery on his face, Yasuke was told to select features that were ‘beautiful’. His picture of beauty was a girl who smiled at him in his nigtmares. Beautiful! Great god! His pale skin pulled tight over the muscles and arteries beneath as if every fine detail had been carved out of marble; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a peraly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contast with his lifeless eyes, and straight black lips. 

 

All of those beautiful features strung together, could not amount of anything of substance. There were two eyes, a nose, a set of lips, teeth, two ears, cheeks, a chin, and yet Matsuda could not see a face. He had broken into graves and stolen body parts. His shoes were still wet with soil. He smelled of the mildew that grew on those graves. Yet, even after sewing all those body parts together in a perfect anatomical model he could not call this a ‘human being’. 

 

Matsuda had hidden his face underneath a blue hospital cloth unable to look at him any more. His hand trembled as he reached forward, his fingers long and white, no different from the skeletal hands of the reaper curling around the boy underneath him. He slowly pulled the cloth off to look at the monster’s face again, only to see his own face looking back up at him. It was cold, and completely still, as if he was taken by sleep or death. Yasuke reached forward to caress the cheek of his own face. 

 

Then suddenly he staggered backwards and grabbed his head. He pushed the two sides of his skull together to prevent them from splitting. “Oh so I’m literally going mad instead of just metaphorically. So, that’s neat.” He commented to himself. When he looked back again, Hajime Hinata was sleeping there dressed in blue hospital robes.    
  
The other scientists on the team lost their patience and demanded that Yasuke return Hinata to his bed, if removing his bandages had gone successfully. He still remembered how it felt, slowly unraveling the bandages and letting them fall in a mess at his feet only to see a different boy looking back at him from the one he first met so long ago. 

 

As the other scientists on the team started to manhandle them, Hinata slowly began to regain consciousness. He looked at the other men around him like he did not even see their faces, and startled back. Hinata had stopped talking to him a while ago and was mostly silent these days. The only emotions he seemed to exhibit was fear, and pain.    
  
Hinata slumped and fell to the floor. One of the scientists grabbed him by the arm, and tried to drag him up. The other two crowded around him. Even though it was only a slight twitching, Yasuke could recognize pain on Hinata’s face.    
  
“Enough! Are you going to ruin your so called ‘perfect specimen’ because none of you can stop being clumsy dumbasses for five minutes!” Yasuke said as he got between the scientists and Hinata. They all disliked him, because he was the project head at only seventeen years old when they had been devoting their entire lives to this and still had created nothing of merit with their own meager talents. If Yasuke was a therapist like Gekkougahara, he might say something like they were projecting on Hinata and that was the reason why they shoved all those talents into his empty head.    
  
He wasn’t a therapist however. He did not try to heal people. He cut them apart with his scalpel. He dissected them for study. He cracked open their heads and spilled out the contents. He stole body parts from graves and sewed them together. That was why Komaeda liked him so much, he was his doctor but he never once tried to fix him. 

 

Hinata looked up at Yasuke, and recognition flickered in his dim eyes. He was much taller than Yasuke, so he had to lean his whole body against Yasuke to be supported by him. Yasuke saw Kamukura’s hands twitch as if he wanted to do something with him, as if he was searching for someone to hold onto.    
  
“You…”    
  
“Huh? Spit it out already?”   
  
“You always take care of me.”    
  
“That’s because you’re just an empty headed and useless reserve student who can’t do a thing for himself.”   
  
“Thank you…” 

 

Yasuke felt Kamukura’s body warm against his own. If he was just pieces of a corpse sewn together then where did this warmth come from? Perhaps it was the embers of the fire that prometheus had stolen, burning up Hinata from the inside. That metaphor was so pretentious that Yasuke wanted to punch himself in the face right there.    
  
He wanted to punch himself for several reasons.   
Because.   
Because.    
_ Don’t say that.  _   
Yasuke opened his mouth but he could not speak.    
His eyes watered but he could never cry.    
His heart could not beat, as long as a hand grabbed it and red nails dug into it.    
_ Don’t thank me.  _ _  
_ _ I haven’t… _ _  
_ _ I haven’t done a single thing for you.  _   
  


Yasuke woke up suddenly wiping at his eyes, trying to forget what he had been dreaming about. “Weren’t you just criticizing me for staying up all night staring at those monitors?” 

 

“Wipe that look off your face.”    
  
“What are you talking about? I’m a man-made monster who doesn’t have any human emotions, there is no way I could convey anything with my face other than my own boredom.”    
  
“That shit eating grin you’re showing me. Somebody’s pleased with himself.”   
  
Kamukura’s face was as still as always. Yet, somehow Yasuke seemed to be good at discerning his moods. “I’m never pleased with myself, ever.”    
  
“Oh shit, me too.” Yasuke yawned as he stretched.   
  
He had been curled up on a chair. The two of them together moved the monitors to the main room, keeping them away from Gundham’s bed so Kamukura could monitor both at the same time. When Yasuke came in to check on Kamukura he noticed the other nodding off, and took his own white lab coat off and draped it over Kamukura’s shoulders. He sat down for a moment to rest and then started to dream like an idiot. Now Kamukura was standing there awkwardly in his lab coat and neither of them wanted to talk about it. 

 

“I told you quit staring at me, feeling your ugly ass eyes looking me all over is making my skin crawl.”    
  
“You’re the only other person in the room.”   
  
“Did you just call me a person? That’s terrible. We know I’m the real monster between the two of us. I may be an ass but I’m a prideful about how fine of an ass I am, I won’t let you understate how terrible I am.”    
  
Sometimes Kamukura thought that Yasuke was also partially responsible for Junko’s terrible way of speaking, if she did copy from her environment just like he did. “But you’re not supposed to reveal that twist until the end,” Kamukura muttered. 

 

“...Junko always used to do that. She never asked how I was feeling, she just looked at me and suddenly thought she knew everything,” Yasuke wore a look of annoyance on his face and yet, his fingers curled tight around the button up shirt that loosely hung off his chest, as if he were still trying to hold onto those precious memories even if they were nothing more than a bundle of thorns. 

 

Kamukura leaned over Yasuke as he still sat on the chair, his hands on both of Yasuke’s knees. A pitch black shadow, his hair were the trails of ink leaking away from him into the portrait of the scenery behind him. IT was like nobody was even standing there at all in the darkness. One of his eyes glowed red, it was like a single red apple. “What do I look like to you?”    
  
Kamukura so tall, his limbs thin and long. His hair branching out in every direction from his body. He looked like a lifeless tree whose leaves had fallen off a long time ago. For a moment reality blurred in front of Yasuke’s eyes, he saw Kamukura curl his hand around and caress one of the branches as the tree grew over both of them. His hair became knotted and tangled on each of the tree’s branches reaching out like fingers. 

  
Kamukura hung off the tree naked. On the tree stripped of all, Yasuke could see everything. A thin body whose skin pinched tight on all of his curves, lacking in any body fat at all, only muscle perfectly carved up under a knife. Yasuke reached forward and brushed his bangs back, to reveal the stitch scars on his forehead. He traced them all across with his fingers, feeling the bumps and grooves on his skin. Mismatched dull eyes that were otherwise perfect symmetrical almonds on his face, sharp cheeks, and yet as strong as his gaze was his features were surprisingly delicate. Unlike Hinata who was a rough boy, Kamukura had cheeks that warmed and came to life with a touch just like flowers, and soft lips. He looked like he might break if anyone touched him, that was why he had to isolate himself.    
  
Yasuke’s eyes trailed down as he saw the depression of Kamukura’s collar bone. The way his neck dipped low into such strong looking shoulders. The shallow indents his bones made in his skin, and the lines his muscle drew. Yasuke got the impression that if he touched a hand to Kamukura’s neck, he would begin to feel a pulse. 

 

His wide chest, gave way to narrow hips. Yasuke’s eyes continued to trail down that body as he saw his well muscled stomach. If he layed his hand flat on that, Kamukura would tense to the touch and he could see those muscles move underneath his skin. If his eyes continued even further down as if pulled by gravity, he could follow the lines that trailed beneath his tight waist o see the snake hidden in the garden. 

  
Their Eden was completely devoid of life, no trees, no flowers, and no fruit, because both of them had died a long time ago. Kamukura tied himself to that tree, he reached forward and plucked a single red apple. He brought the apple to his lips, and pressed it against his soft lips in a kiss, before biting into it. Yasuke felt something stirring deep inside of him at the sight.    
  
Back in reality Yasuke realized he had not answered. “You look like an ugly, empty, idiot, who got all of his brains scooped out.”    
  
“What were you thinking about just now?”    
A garden.   
A snake.   
A tempting smirk on his lips.    
  
That was right was Kamukura… was he Adam, or was he the snake? Yasuke’s vision suddenly shifted again and he saw a body that was half skeleton, and half naked flesh only censored by the plumage of soft white feathers that glowed like sunlight. He was born naked. He was never asked to be made. He never asked to be tempted with the fruit.    
  
“I was thinking about Junko.”    
  
“I’m disappointed with how predictable your thought patterns are.”   
  
“Trust me, nobody is as disappointed as I am in myself,” Kamukura wanted him to be closer. He was just trying to get his attention, and that was why Yasuke could never allow himself to become too close. 

  
Speak of the devil. Junko showed up on the screen in front of him. She was looking at the motive video with intensive interest.  _ “You could revive Kumagawa from the dead, or your other boyfriend?”  _   
  
Yasuke started to smile without realizing it. “They called me her other boyfriend.”   
  
“You’re completely hopeless.” 

 

Junko stared at Kumagawa’s corpse on her screen, but she did not cry. Her face was as still as Kamukura’s. Yasuke remembered in the past Junko always held him when he needed to cry alone, but thinking just now he realized. Had he ever seen her cry? Even once? 

  
“Apparently, we are dead. Did they have to pick such a boring lie to tell?” Kamukura commented flatly as he saw Komaeda looking at his own motive video.    
  
“God, I wish…”   
  
“I do not wish for you to die.”    
  
“How cruel can you get?” Kamukura once slaughtered all of the scientists. Not an act of malice, but rather of pure boredom. Matsuda remembered the tail end of all of his hair, dipped in blood like a coarse paintbrush. The scent of death so thick in the air Yasuke felt it permeate his flesh, and grab his throat. At that time, Kamukura had left Yasuke alive. He even reached a hand forward to help him off the ground when he fell back in surprise. 

 

_ I’m sorry.  _ _  
_ _ I didn’t want you to see this.  _   
  
Don’t apologize to me. Yasuke remembered how tightly he had closed his eyes to shut out any tears. He knew back then and even now, that he was the only one Kamukura should have killed.    
  
“You would be boring to me as a corpse, and of no use to anyone.”   
  
“I’m pretty useless when I’m alive as well.” 

 

Kamukura’s eyes slowly went back to the screen. He saw Komaeda clutching Kamukura’s face on the kubs pad close to his chest. Kamukura put his hand onscreen as if trying to touch him again, even though he logically knew it was a fruitless effort.    
  
  


“You like it don’t you? Seeing Komaeda fall apart without you by his side, because that means he really needs you right.”    
  
“...”    
  
“Don’t go silent. If you inherited my shitty ass personality, then you inherited my shitty ass flaws as well. That’s why I know, you just hate the fact that it’s Kumagawa he’s all broken up over. You wanted to be the one…”   
  
“...”   
  
“The one to break him, and the one to heal him. Jeez, what kind of shitty god complex are you developing?” 

 

“Why do you want me to hate you so badly, Matsuda?” 

 

Matsuda stopped suddenly. Jeez he always had to run his mouth. He wanted to punch himself in the face so hard all of his teeth were knocked out. “It’d be easier if you hated me…” 

  
Yasuke remembered his hands closing around the neck of another.   
He said he would help him, but he betrayed him in the end.    
His own hands reaching towards Kamukura.    
It would be easy, and Kamukura would let him.    
He knew he was capable of doing anything if it was for the sake of Ensohima Junko. That was why he could never forgive himself. That was why it was better being hated and being loved.    
  
He fucked everything up, but there was one boy in front of him he did not want to fuck up any worse. Frankenstein probably ran away because he was afraid of his monster’s beauty. He knew the moment he reached out to touch it, it would dirty. 

 

🦔

 

Sonia fell asleep on Gundham’s hospital bed. Her long blonde hair made golden tresses, spilling out from her body and all over. She did not look nearly as neat and composed as she usually was. The ribbons she always wore around her hair and neck were both gone. Instead, she had draped Gundham’s long purple scarf around her shoulders. 

  
Yasuke and Hinata noticed her as they both moved to check on Gundham. They tried to be quiet, something Hinata was great at and Yasuke was terrible at. 

 

Sonia slowly woke up on her own, regardless. She saw Gundham’s bandaged hand on the bed and reached for it, her fingers slowly coming apart to thread between his but before she could ever make contact she stopped herself. She grabbed her own wrist and pulled herself back.    
  
“Oh my, there’s a terrifying curse hidden within my hand. I must fight back against this accursed venom which flows through my veins.”   
  
“I think those are just called teenage hormones from a hopelessly lovesick case, but that’s just my diagnosis as a doctor,” Yasuke sighed behind her.    
  
Hinata jabbed Yasuke hard in the side with his elbow. Once again Yasuke saw from the side, the face Hinata wore in front of his friends was much different than how he acted around him. “Um, you don’t have to smile like that, Sonia.”   
  
“Oh, did I say something strange?” Sonia said, gasping as she held a hand over her lips.    
  
“Always,” Yasuke said.   
  
Hinata elbowed him again. “No… I was just thinking, you’re strangely calm right now. Sonia… are you not really worried about Gundham?”    
  
“Of course I am worried, and I am also angry. Jeez, you understand nothing about a girl’s feelings Hinata, no wonder you drove Kurokami away with such poor manners.”    
  
“I’m sorry okay! I just wanted to say you didn’t have to smile for somebody like me.”    
  
“I must seem like a terribly cold girl, but there are other things far more important than my own personal feelings…”    
  
“I-I’m sure he’ll be happy when he wakes up and the first thing he sees is your smiling face,” Hinata said, trying to be positive. He either did not try at all or he tried way too hard, and there was no in between.

  
  
“Yeah, I doubt that. That guy is as gloomy as you can get. He’d probably just give some cliche line like ‘Don’t show such a beautiful smile to someone like me, black queen’.”    
  
Hinata immediately turned around to accost Yasuke. “Do you know how to act around other people? Do you have any idea really?”    
  
“If I did do you really think I would choose to act this way?” Yasuke retorted.    
  
“You two, this is not the time to joke around together.” Sonia said, her voice becoming strict. “This doesn’t feel real. It feels like a scene from one of my J-dramas. I know I cannot be a person before I am a princess, but… why can’t… I just have one tiny thing to myself…”    
  
For her Gundham was more than just a friend she had made abroad, or even a lover, if she was with him, she could be a person.  He treated her with disdain and always pushed her away, and yet that was so much better than being isolated on her pedestal. Being regarded as a princess was no better than being treated like a monster, being hated and loved could be done from the same distance, and yet with one kiss he could bring her back and make her into a girl again. 

 

“I just wanted one boy to be mine…” 

 

“Just cry already, or I’ll be mean and make you cry,” Yasuke threatened.    
  
Hinata looked back at him. “God, you’re just like dealing with Komaeda. Can’t you just shut your mouth, and pretend to be normal, just for five seconds please? Sonia’s trying to be positive and optimistic, not that you even know what that is.”   
  
“Listen, Sonia. You’re not in front of your people. You’re with two miserable bastards. So, you don’t have to do anything for our sakes.”   
  
Sonia suddenly ran towards Hinata, and rested her head on his chest. She made a terrible sound with her mouth that sounded like a suppressed shriek, and yet Yasuke could not tell if she was crying or not.    
  
“”It’s good that we have you, Hinata…”   
  
“Really, I’m not anyone special. You’re the princess here.” 

 

Sonia gave a rueful smile, hidden away from him in his chest. “To not be anything special, I wonder how hella rad that would feel.” She closed her eyes. “You really are something to be able to say that so easily.”    
  


“Don’t you feel special?” Yasuke said from behind him. “The reserve course student gets to be center of the Ultimate Course just like he always wanted to be, all you had to do was let me rip your heart out.”    
  
“You’re even mean like Komaeda is.”   
  
“Komaeda is a kind and gentle soul afraid of his own shadow, I’m much meaner,” Yasuke said, with a smile that looked too sickening for a doctor to wear. 

  
Into Hinata’s chest Sonia continued to mutter. Her fingers curled against him, as if she were grasping tightly for strings that would always slip out of her fingers. “I just wanted…. Something of my own…” 

  
“Gundham doesn’t even like anybody but you!” Hinata said, trying to think of something. 

 

“Oh, he hates humans you know. If… If I were to become a normal girl in front of him, do you think he would hate me too?” 

 

_ “Before you can become happy, you must make sure the people are happy first.”  _

 

They were good words for a ruler to follow, but Sonia Nevermind heard them when she was just a child. She was born a princess, because of that she was never allowed to be a little girl. 

 

Her parents always went out with her and smiled in public. Yet, when they were home together she never saw them, nor did they talk with her. She once heard one of her tutors compare it to raising a sheep dog. If you treated a sheep dog like a dog, and spoiled it with affection it would start demanding to be treated like a dog and shirk off its responsibilities.    
  
That was why Sonia understood from a young age, if her parents ever once reached out to her in affection then she would stop acting like a princess. She would forget who she was, and start thinking she could act just like a normal girl, that she could smile freely when she wanted like everybody else.    
  
When she was in public she smiled, but in private no expression ever crossed her face. She worked all day long, and when she was done working for the sake of others she simply waited to fall asleep. She heard once that Mozart was forced to play over and over again until his fingers bled, and then he was slapped with a ruler for every tiny mistake. 

She had no idea how people could continue to call Mozart a genius. Anybody in those circumstances would be forced to become talented. Talented people had no choice but to be talented, just like she could not be anything other than a princess.   
  
Her tutors treated her similiarly, corporal punishment was not looked down upon in Novoselic. Far away in some dark room made of stone, she was punished for every single tiny mistake in her lessons, and then not allowed to cry about it. She was only allowed to cry for the sake of her people. She was a selfish girl if she really put her people’s needs above her own. 

 

One day her faceless tutor brought her before a man in chains. He put a knife in her hands. This was the beginning of a different kind of lesson. “In the future you will be expected to lead our militaries as well. This man is a spy for enemy forces masquerading as one of our own finish him off.”   
  
“W-what? I’m not supposed to hurt anybody, mother and father said, I would become a kind and gracious queen that protected her people.”    
  
“Who do you think you will have to protect them from,” He suddenly turned the knife against Sonia’s own neck. “What if this man had snuck into the castle and assassinated your parents late at night? What if he was standing over your bed holding a knife to your neck like this, do you really think he would hesitate?” 

 

“I… I don’t…”    
  
“Fine. I’ll let this man go. Let’s let the people see that their own princess prefers a stranger. How many do you think he’ll kill? Five? Ten? I’ll notify their families that-”   
  
“I’ll do it!” 

 

Sonia broke. She took the knife in shaking hands. It was far too large for her hand. The man could not fight back, or even open his mouth, but she saw him plead with his eyes and begin to cry. She only stabbed harder wanting it to be over.    
  
Sonia dropped the knife. She touched her hands to her mouth in abject horror, only to taste blood on her fingers. She retched and then fell to the floor.    
  
  


As he saw her vomit, her tutor kicked her in the stomach. “You’re a princess, take this seriously. I know you’re only pretending so you can slack off.” 

 

Her disgust and nausea only got worse. The man knelt down to her level and grabbed her by both her hand. He jerked her wrist back harshly, and then caressed her hand softly. “You are a slave to this country. If the people ask it, you must cover your hands in blood like this.”   
  
“W-why…?”   
  
“Because you’re a princess. A princess must always be beautiful, even when soaked in blood.” 

 

That man picked her up and dragged her somewhere else. “Don’t worry, as your teacher  I’m not punishing you for failing me. We can use this as another learning oppurtunity. It’s likely several times in the future you will be kidnapped and held hostage as a political prisoner, at that time you must never lose your dignity.”    
  
As he said that, he locked her in a stone cold room. A heavy chain was tied around her ankle, and she sat on the floor. “You will be given water, but only food once a day. You have to remain quiet in these situations, any secrets you give up to your kidnappers could kill more people in the country. If you were to die, don’t worry, your people would grieve for you.” 

 

Sonia looked at the chain tied around her ankle with despondent eyes. She was supposed to be a princess, everybody kept telling her that. She had heard it so many times she almost forgot her own name. She forgot who this child was chained up to the wall.    
  
She wondered if she could be friends with such a little girl. Until she remembered again it was just her, she had only wandered outside of her body. She craned her neck up, looking into a dream.    
  
“Hey, if I’m a princess then where is my prince?”    
  
She asked, but there was no one to answer her. “Why won’t a prince come and save me already? It’s too hard, it’s hard being a princess…”    
  


That was the first and last time she complained about the life she had been born into. After that she became studious, so much so her parents praised her and started to buy her any gifts she want. Sonia was not satisfied with dresses, so she asked them for souvenirs from foreign countries.

  
She just wanted to imagine she was born somewhere else. That she was a normal girl born in any other country in the world but this one. Eventually she begged her parents enough that they let her leave this country all on her own, it was part of a bargain she said if she could be free for just two years she would come back assume her role without any complaints after that.    
  
She moved to Japan, and she found him! A prince of her own! A dark prince and brooding armor. 

 

Unlike everybody else he did not see her as the princess from some fairy tale.    
He got angry at her like normal.   
He laughed with her like normal.   
He talked to her like normal. 

He frowned at her, but he frowned at everybody else too. 

  
The more she realized just how kind Gundham was, for tolerating her selfish request to always be by his side when he could not stand being around others, the more she came to hate herself. 

 

When she looked at other people all she could think was “How are they of any use to anyone?”    
  
If she was a tool, then they all were too.    
She smiled at them always, but it was a condescending smile. She relished how much better she was, than these selfish little brats who only ever thought about themselves. Her only fault was her own selflessness. She was too considerate, too kind, she always thought about others before herself.    
  
How cold she was.    
_ The fact that someone like you could like someone like me, makes me uneasy.  _ She said, thinking of Gundham once more. 

She picked up GUndham’s hand in her own fantasy, and held it against her cheek. In her dreams, she was the only one who could touch him like this. She was the only one by his side. She belonged only to him. She ceased to be a princess, and became his. 

 

That hand suddenly was not Gundham, she saw red as claws scraped at the side of her face. “You’re so kind! So selfless! A model student! A model princess! But what you really wanted was anything but…” 

 

Enoshima Junko’s voice echoed in her ears.    
  
“The truth is there’s no one more selfish than you, is there?” 

 

Then suddenly, Enoshima Junko’s face took on a sympathetic quality. “I’m so sorry, senpai! Nobody’s ever told you this have they? But it’s okay to desire things for yourself. Fooooooor example, what I desire is… the real you.”   
  
Enoshima Junko was right.   
Nobody had once told her that it was okay to desire.   
Nobody once wanted to see the real her.   
Not until she met a girl named Enoshima Junko. 

 

🦔

 

“I can walk on my own you know. It’s demeaning being carried around like this,” Nanami complained as she was carried along by Medaka. 

  
“Oh, sorry! I wasn’t looking down on you or anything. I just thought it was a nice feeling, like a little sister riding on my back.”   
  
“Hmph. There’s such a thing as being too lose with your affections you know. You’re just acting borderline creepy.”   
  
“It’s not a bad thing wanting to be close to others.”    
  
“But, I don’t want you to be close to me. You smell.”  Nanami said as Medaka put her down. 

  
  


The thin and frail Nanami, skin deathly pale. Kurokami Medaka glowed with life next to her, she was painted all sorts of colors. Just looking at the two of them anybody would come to the conclusion that life was unfair.    
  
There are some mythologies where the moon is a corpse, whereas the sun is still vibrant and alive.

 

“Um. Sorry again. Sorry a thousand times. I’ll perform Ultimate Dogeza if you want me too. I’ll show you how a woman of the Kurokami bloodline begs for fogiveness!”    
  
She was way too enthusiastic even with her apologies. Nanami just ignored her and walked forward. Medaka nervously trailed behind her. For some all of her confidence, she was somewhat awkward as well. 

  
“You’re a shy ingenue aren’t you…?” Nanami asked.    
  
“Well I’m a girl too, even if everyone seems to forget that,” Medaka said, most of them just thought she was a monster with no feelings. When she had more feelings than anybody else.    
  
“D-do…”    
  
“Hm?”    
  
“Do you want to talk?”   
  
“Not particularly, no.”    
  
“O-of course! Then I will become the silent, stoic hero.”   
  
That girl was being weird again. Nanami gave a sigh that was literally paniful as it caused her lungs to ache in her chest. “I suppose there’s no helping it, you’ll just keep talking no matter what I do.”    
  
“That’s right! So it’s easier to give in and just become my friend now!” Medaka said, suddenly reversing her mood as she cheered with enthusiasm. “There’s no way I’m giving up on you, Nanami.” 

  
  
“It would be less annoying if you gave up on me, really…” She curled her fingers around her face, muttering an oh my as well.    
  
“Your brother, aren’t you looking for him?”   
  
“Hmm? What does my family have anything to do with you?”    
  
“B-but, I just know I can’t find my brother or sister right now and I’m worried about them too. So if I were you, I’d want to find them again.” 

 

“It’s not like I’m looking for him, he’s just hopeless on his own.” She giggled, it escaped her lips on accident. She curled up her finger in her sickly green hair and pulled at it. In Nanami’s opinion, green was the only color that suited her, the color of bacteria. “When I was young we ate watermelon together in my hospital bed, and he would just make a mess.”    
  
“Oh?”    
  


“And, he would promise to stay up with me all night and protect me from the nightmares, but then he would fall asleep first.” 

 

“Ah, you really are a human being. You’re just a girl who loves her younger brother, no different than anyone else.” 

 

Nanami batted her eyes. Her lips were dry and cracked with her sickness. “What else would I be?” 

 

“I mean… I’ve always wanted to be more like other people.”    
  
“So you wanted to be boring and petty?” Nanami decided to continue the conversation. “Tell me about your brother.”   
  
“He’s a big weirdo.”    
  
“Oh, so he’s just like you?”    
  
Medaka just tuned her out again. She was good at that, off in her own little world where people were kind and good on the inside. “So did you always spend time in the hospital?”    
  
“I was not always sick, sometimes my condition improved but even then my parents would forcibly hospitalize me at the slightest sneeze.”   
  
“They must have been worried about you?”    
  
“No, they were just paranoid. I was the sick one you know, but they always acted like it was such suffering… that I was born their child.” A smile came to her lips. Nanami seemed to smile at all the wrong things. “Well, it’s not like they were wrong.” 

  
Medaka suddenly stopped as someone called after them. Sonia hastened to catch up with them. “Medaka, did you have another fight with Hinata again? I’ll tell him his behavior was supes uncool. If I tell him he’s being problematic then he’ll probably reflect upon himself and improve, so come back please.” 

 

Medaka was touched by Sonia’s kindness, or perhaps she just wanted to believe in somebody after Chisa turned her away. “Will you help me convince Hinata-senpai to help this girl? I know this killing game is hard on everybody, but we can’t forget other people in our own suffering.” 

 

“Ah! What a cute girl! She’s like the ill little sister type character in one of my J-dramas!” Sonia came closer and closer. Medaka felt a strange amount of trepidation, as if her body was telling her something she refused to believe. “Of course. I was born to be of service to others. We’re both princesses so we should be able to understand each other.” 

 

Sonia pulled her into a tight embrace. “I know it’s hard isn’t it? Just because you’re strong, you think it’s wrong to rely on people. Just because you were so spoiled by life you think it’s wrong for you to be anything but happy. You don’t have to run away to help this girl all on your own, we can help her together.”    
  
Medaka felt warmth for a moment.   
That warmth was in the wrong place.   
It trickled out of her side.    
She saw a knife in her side. 

 

Medaka immediately struck out, but Sonia jumped back dodging easily.  As she tore the knife away, she was careful not to drip any of the blood from the blade on Gundham’s scarf still wrapped around her.“Your family should have been stricter on you. They’ve really spoiled your brains rotten. You’ve forgotten two things about me, I’ve been trained at warfare from a young age I’m almost at Ikusaba Mukuro’s level and also, I fell into despair once.”    
  
“Hinata-kun saved you. He gave you hope.”    
  
“Just because there’s hope doesn’t mean the bad feelings disappear. Just because you force yourself to smile, you won’t stop wanting to cry. Life is hella tragic like that.” 

 

She easily twirled her knife around in her hands. She had been trained to do this after all. She had a knife put into her hands when she was just a little girl. Yet she had no memory of holding her father’s hand. “For us former Ultimate Despair, we all loved her once. You’re so much like her…”   
  
“Enoshima Junko?”    
  
Medaka had a beautiful image in her head.   
A hero who could save people, who could make people happy.    
Recovery was not the beautiful thing she imagined it to be.    
It was messy, it was almost like people did not want to heal.    
  
“You’re so like her. Just being around you is the same as her. She was so compelling, she pulled you into her orbit… you… if it was you I’m sure you would have become the perfect princess without ever once falling into despair.” 

 

“Senpai, you wanted to go back to your kingdom after this right? You… you just made a mistake. You just fell down. You can go back there, you can fix your mistakes.”    
  
“My mother and father are dead. The novoselic kingdom is no more. When it’s princess failed to return, it was invaded by neighboring countries. I’m a princess of nothing.”   
  
“I’m so sorry…”    
  
Sonia was amazed that Medaka could feel sympathy for her at a time like this. Unlike Sonia who only ever wore fake smiles, unlike Enoshima Junko who told others what they wanted to hear, Medaka was genuinely kind. 

 

“Th-that’s why. I have to protect the few people I have left, after having failed my whole kingdom to throw a selfish temper tantrum.” Sonia said, as she leveled her knife at the girl who was standing next to Medaka. Nanami did not cower at all. As if living and dying were exactly the same thing to her.    
  
“I understand you’re in pain, but Nanami’s in pain too. She needs help just as much as you do, it’s unfair to forget about her problems because you’re so wrapped up in your own.”    
  
“You really are spoiled…” Sonia shook her head. Perhaps she really did not want to kill Nanami for the sake of everybody else. Maybe she wanted to prove just how weak Kurokami Medaka was, that just like her she was not allowed to have a single thing of her own. She wanted to see the little girl that she was trying to protect broken in a hospital bed like Gundham was. Sonia smiled, not for anybody else but for herself. A smile like a sharpening knife, as she cut at the distance between her and Medaka.   
  
Medaka dodged. 

“How can someone as smart as you be so oblivious to the world? Don’t you understand, the few have to make sacrifices to benefit the many! This is a good thing! This is why the people of my country were able to live in harmony, because I made every sacrifice for them. Everyone will live for the week. It's selfish to put one person over the majority!"   
  
Sonia swung her combat knife in wild arcs like she was not even aiming for Medaka, just trying to cut apart what she saw in front of her. 

“Fight back!” Sonia snarled.    
Perhaps that was why Gundham called her she-cat.   
He could see the fangs she was always keeping hidden.    
  
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to hit somebody who is already crying.”   
  
“Huh?” 

Sonia stopped suddenly, and touched her face. She did not even notice the tears that were streaming down either side of her face. She could not cry over Gundham, and yet she could cry over just another selfish attention seeking tantrum of hers. 

“Ah-aaaaaah!”    
  
Medaka reached out to comfort her, but suddenly Nanami pulled on her arm. “You really are dull…” 

“I’m sorry, senpai. I guess I really must have been spoiled compared to you. If it makes you happier to hate me that’s fine, if you change your mind and want to be friends later I’d be happy but for now… I’m really sorry.”    
  
Medaka turned her back away, and grabbed Nanami by the hand dragging her away. She could not protect everybody, it was a harsh lesson she had learned once, and yet she felt like she had to learn it over and over again.   
  
Over and over.   
Over and over.   
Over and over.   
Over and over. 

She couldn’t be like Enoshima Junko. Sonia was wrong to say that. After all she felt no hatred at the girl who had just tricked her and almost killed the person she was trying to protect. Enoshima Junko was filled with despair. Medaka felt no despair at all.   
  
That’s right.   
She wasn’t sad.  
She wasn't sad at all.  
There was no way she could be sad, when Sonia was crying like that. 


	18. I'm Tired of Being Forgiven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikan is in this chapter a lot.

**Chapter 2: God Punishes the Elite** **  
** **Day Two: Part Two**

 

So sentimental.   
Not sentimental no.   
Romantic not discussing it.    
Tsumiki Mikan gripped the side of her face, and pressed her nails hard into her skin to imagine that her hand belonged to someone else. With a wistful sigh she mused.  _ Darling, I’m down and lonely.  _

 

“Y-you’re wrong about me.”   
  
She finally mustered up the courage to say it.    
  
“Huh?”    
  
“I never wanted to kill Enoshima-san, not even once. I’m not crazy like you are.” 

 

“Really, I think wanting to kill Enoshima-san is the sane response.” 

 

Mikan has always hated silence, but she lets the conversation end there. Her body just wants to reject that everything that Emukae Mukae is. If Mikan was medicine then Mukae was poison. If Mikan’s hands healed and soothed to the touch, then Emukae’s burned and rotted away. That was why Mikan was happy for once if Mukae completely ignored her, for the first time she did not care at all what another person thought of her.    
  
_ If you can’t be a cure, be a poison. Otherwise, you’re just plain old water.  _ Her mother used to say things like that. Mikan didn’t think she was a very good mother. _ Your life will be a much bigger pain in the ass than most people. It’ll be boring, irritating and too hard to handle. But that isn’t because you’re anything special. It’s because you’re weak. You will end up living your entire life bearing that weakness.  _ Mikan thought that was a horrible thing for an adult to say to a child.    
  
Her mother liked to say things that confused people, things she may or may not have understood herself. In that household, she felt like an extra, she was nothing more than “that little person over there.” 

 

Years later when she met a girl who was either god or the devil, who spoke in the same confusing way as her mother she knew exactly what her mother would have had to say.  _ Gods and devils are the same thing. Stop dressing it up like they’re any different they just treat humans like their toys.  _

 

She was raised on words like that.  _ Ugly. Bitch. Coward. Dumb. Scum. Clumsy. Gross. Filthy Pig. Lazy. Loser. Slut. Garbage. Worthless. Freak. Dirty. Annoying. Annoying. Annoying. Annoying.  _

 

Not just at home, but at school, the teachers, the students, those words overwrote everything she could have possibly thought about herself and became her reality. She only heard those words over and over again. It was impossible to believe in herself, because any thought she had about herself was drowned out by the overwhelming noise of what others thought of her.    
  
It was as if someone took a pair of scisors, and at the sharp ends carved every single word, every insult that had ever been spewed at her in her skin itself. That way when people looked at her, they would know exactly who she was, they would be able to read it off the marks in her skin. Mikan stared at the red, oozing words as they bled on her skin. She could not stitch the wound up no matter how hard she tried, if it would not heal she could only wrap it up in bandages. 

  
In her dream she was naked. All of the bandages had become unraveled and everybody could see her. They saw the words written all over her and then they laughed. She felt their eyes on her, burning more words into her skin as they regarded her as little more than a naked pig squealing in front of them. She tried to run away, but one of the bullies caught her by the hair. For a moment the boy with hateful eyes seemed charmed by her.    
  
“Such pretty hair, it’s amazing that you managed to grow it this long. Such long ladylike hair is unsuited for filth like you.”   
  
He pulled her hair hard enough that it felt like he was trying to rip it from her scalp. Then, he picked up a pair of scissors, and cut her hair into uneven and messy strands, leaving her dark hair in tatters on the ground.

  
Mikan decided to keep it that way. That way everybody would know that the bullies had ruined her hair the moemnt they saw her. 

 

Her mother used to say to her.  _ Wake the hell up, you stupid girl.  _   
Mikan’s eyes shot open as she woke up. It must have been the beginning of the second day, or the second night rather. She felt Emukae’s eyes on her, but once again she did not care what was hiding behind such poisonous eyes. 

 

That’s right.   
She didn’t care one bit.    
It was usually the opposite, she cared too much, about everything… ever.    
She wanted to be seen as a good person, even though she was sure she was not one.    
Because at the back of her mind the possibility always irked her that there’s something repugnant about her. That she provokes people to treating her this way. That just like her mother said she was weak, she was the reason she was always bullied. That it was her fault her parents simply did not like her. 

 

_ But, thinking that makes me want to cry.  _

 

That was why she was medicine. She was soothing. She was the cure. She was kind enough to learn to treat the wounds of others, because she did not want anybody else to suffer alone the same way she had. She was the opposite of Emukae, who was just toxicity embodied,  who wanted to be nothing more than the poison the world had made her by grabbing her by the hair and pushing her head deep into the swamp until she drank the mud and breathed noxious fumes.    
  
That was why she didn’t think at all about Emukae. She closed her eyes and turned her head away in a  _ hmmph,  _ only to shyly glance back a moment later. 

 

Mukae.    
To be angry.    
Anger bloomed within her heart like countless flowers.    
Her pink hair fell in messy strands like the lifeless petals of a flower that had long since wilted. It looked like her hair color had once been red, but all the color drained out of her as if watered down, and washed away by rain, and that faint pink was just a sign that there had once been life. 

 

Her strands of hair, those limp little petals, they tempted Mikan to reach forward and brush them out of her face and behind her ear. 

 

_ Raffleasia.  _ A plant genus nicknamed the corpse flower, because they produce a smell like a rotting corpse. Mukae gave her the impression, not of a single flower, coquettishly opening her petals towards Mikan to let her see what was inside. She was an entire corpse bloom. That girl would never just be one flower, she was the whole garden.    
  
After the Garden of Eden was abandoned by mankind did anybody care for the flowers? Over time, that garden must have become overgrown with weeds, vines, leaves that had fallen from above, its flowers bitten apart by insects, full of holes, all the color drained out. A run down, overrun, trampled-on garden. The flowers were all stepped on without much thought for their individual beauty.    
  
The flowers bled. Their colors bled away. The colors leaked. They fell like a rainbow rain. They mixed together in ugly puddles on the soil. Drip. Drip. Drip. Slowly draining away. Until there was no color left. Until there was only the sense that there once had been color there. This once had been a beautiful garden. 

  
  
Things that were left behind, all they could do was rot away. Emukae laid amongst the dead leaves, the weeds, the flowers crushed underfoot, she lay there naked. Not a single scrap or thread of clothing covered her body. There was nowhere for her to hide. She did not try to hide. She was naked as the day she was born. She was ugly as the day she was born. She was not ashamed. 

 

She leaned back against the tree in utter bliss, like she did not care at all if a snake crawled all over her body and bit her right now. She was a poison worse than any snake’s venom, so why did she have to be worried? 

 

The trees branches extended out behind her back, those two branches reaching out to scrape at the sky at either side of her had lost their leaves a long time ago. They looked like angels wings that had been stripped clean, plucked of all of the divine white plumage until only the skeleton remained. They were the scars that only a fallen angel would carry.    
  
Falling down, falling down. 

 

Mikan looked at her face. It was scarred, wrinkled especially around the eyes. Flower petals torn apart, that was the impression it gave her. Yet, looking at her face was the first time she could comprehend Kumagawa’s words.  _ Broken things can be beautiful. _ Eyes the color of a particularly bright poison, like a nature’s warning sign, the dangerous allure of that beauty made Mikan’s heart rate spike up. The dark circles around her eyes made them look sunken in, and her cheeks were colorless and concave to her face. Mikan almost wanted to stroke them, to see if she could make her blush like blood was capable of running through those delicate cheeks after all.    
  
For a girl who was so in your face, she was surprisingly delicate and dainty. Her neck especially looked fragile, there were scratch marks, and deep purple bruises that looked almost sunken into her skin.    
  
Her body was so angular and bony, that Mikan felt if she put a hand to her waist she risked snapping the girl in two. The only color to her body was the way her chest glowed red, as her sternum dipped down into her breasts. As if to show that she did indeed have a heart pumping blood underneath that chest. Her narrow hips dived into her legs, and she crossed her legs like a knot preventing Mikan from seeing anything else. All of those scars that ran down her arms and legs, especially on the inside of her thighs, she did not hide them, she regarded them like the kiss marks left over from the red lipstick of a lover. 

 

That girl reached forward and gathered up flowers in her hands. Even as she touched them, all they did was fall to pieces and fall away from her fingertips. She grave up, and reached for the barren tree that had only a single apple for its fruit. Mukae took the apple, and brought it up to her lips, so pale, so pink, they looked like a kiss of flower petals.    
  
Just before she brought it to her lips, suddenly she stabbed a knife in the center of the red apple. She stabbed it again and again, until the red color drained away, like it was the apple’s juices leaking out. 

 

Tsumiki. Sin tree.    
As if she was the tree in the center of the garden, that that woman leaned herself, her warmth against. Mikan felt the need to apologize over and over, as if life itself was a sin. It was tainted because she had eaten the fruit, but that girl never once apologized.    
  
If Mikan was Eve, then Mukae was most certainly Lilith.    
That was why she was not thinking about her, not at all.    
Because she thought nothing of Mukae, it was surprisingly easy to talk to her.    
  
“What are you staring at anyway?”   
  
“N-nothing…” Mikan quickly said, it was not technically a lie. “I never said I would help you anyway, so I don’t know why you keep hanging around someone so unpopular and unlikable as me.”    
  
“If you don’t help me, I’ll bully you.”   
  
“O-okay, I’ll help you!” Mikan immediately felt ashamed of herself for giving in so easily. She would call herself a disappointment, but nobody expected anything of her in the first place. “I have over five thousand conversation topics memorized if you’re bored-”   
  
“No, that’s fine. Just talk about whatever you want.” 

 

“Noooo! I don’t know what I waaaaant!” Tsumiki immediately began to panic.    
  
It was probably because Emukae did not have an ounce of kindness inside of her, but she did not react to Mikan’s freaking out at all. “Then, you have no choice but to listen to my annoying rambling. Hee hee hee. It’s all your fault, it’s not my fault.” She said in a sing song voice. Emukae was, like Kumagawa, as deranged as she was she was also kind of mellow. 

 

No matter how much of a fuss Mikan through, none of it ever seemed to both Mukae. “Hmmm, is there a boy you like?”    
  
“I don’t like any boys,” Mikan had never admitted that fact out loud before, but she didn’t care about Emukae as a person so she could say whatever she wanted.    
  
“That’s good. If you had said you liked Kumagawa-san, then I would have had to kill you.”   
  
“B-but you’re going to kill me in the end anyway! You don’t make any sense!”   
  
“You’re right, life is ultimately senseless! I’m glad we think the same!”    
  
“No we don’t!” Mikan could also disagree with her without fear of punishment. “Th-then do you like him, Kumagawa-kun?”    
  
“Gosh, you really have the love goggles on tight huh? They’re cutting off the circulation to your brain. Is everything to you utlimately just about being loved or being hated? No relationship matters unless it’s romantic love?”   
  
“Like you’re any different! Ugh, I know I’m the lowest of the low, but being pushed around by someone like you is still so…frustrating…” 

  
Emukae giggled lightly at her joke. Mikan closed her eyes tight as if she was trying to shut out all of her annoyance. She already knew that she was life’s joke, and everybody else’s punchline. “Kumagawa-san, he’s more like a friend. Do you know what that is?”    
  
“O-of course I do! I know I’m far beneath you but please don’t look down on me.”   
  
“Do you even have any friends?”   
  
“I don’t…” Mikan whined, losing confidence she did not even know she had to lose. Technically she did have friends. She made friends for the first time at Hope’s Peak, Sato, Ibuki, Koizumi, and Saionji, they all hung out. Except, Mikan was not able to smile when all the other girls smiled so easily. Not only that, Saionji openly picked on her in front of everyone, and not even once did anybody try to stop her. Those girls probably only let her hang around because they looked so beautiful in comparison to someone ugly like her. 

 

“That’s not good. You should have friends. You’ll go crazy if you’re all on your own.”   
  
“And end up like you?”   
  
“Yep! Just like me! Hee hee hee! Mikan your jokes are so funny, why do you always mumble them like you’re trying to hide them?” 

 

When she laughed everyone fell silent. When she tried to smile other people frowned at her. 

That was because she was repugnant. The only reason Mukae was laughing, and joking around with her like they were a couple of normal girls was because she was equally repugnant.    
  
“Are you a virgin?” 

 

“Th-that’s not something you just ask someone.”   
  
“I don’t think your worth is determined by something like how much experience you have. Actually, I think you’re worthless already so my opinion can’t fall any lower with you. I’m just curious.”     
  
“I am…”   
  
“Oh, with a girl?”   
  
“N-no, a boy, umm… boys...”   
  
“I thought you didn’t like boys?” 

 

Tsumiki Mikan was once approached by the most popular boy in school. She knew her face was not appealing at all, but she at least had curves to her body, and the guys seemed to like girls with big chests. He said he just wanted to lose it with somebody so he could keep his reputation. Girls seemed to like boys that already had another girl’s scent on him. Mikan knew she would be used and threw out, no maybe that was why she did it because she wanted to be useful just for a few minutes. The entire time she stared at the ceiling in disinterest. She was sure though, to placate him, to shower him in compliments, just like she did with her parents to get them to stop hurting her.    
  
The girl that he liked started to look his way. A week later, he dumped Mikan in front of everybody making a public show of it so that girl would see. A week after that she saw the two of them walking arm in arm in the hallway like they were a happy couple. The girl said she was happy she had saved her boyfriend from such a dirty girl like Mikan.    
  
“I like being liked more than I dislike boys.”   
  
“That’s not healthy, Mikan!”

 

“You’re the last one who should be talking about taking care of your health! Look at your skincare it’s absolutely atrocious. And were you up all night staring at me instead of sleeping? Sleep deprivation can cause mood changes, poor memory, high blood pressure, weakened immunity…” Suddenly, Mikan bit herself on the lip until she tasted dirty copper to stop herself from from saying anything else stupid. “I-I’m really sorry. I’m nagging you like your mother.”    
  
“I don’t know what that’s like so it’s fine.”    
  
“Huh…?”   
  
“Oh, I never told you right? Why Kumagawa-san is so important to me. The first time we met, I told him I killed my parents. All he did was smile at me and say  _ That’s fine! They were probalby jerks anyway. If they hurt a precious flower like you, they deserved to die. _ ” 

 

“Th-that’s not the kind of thing you say to a total stranger. It’s impolite!” It was worse than just impolite.    
  
“Who cares about being polite? I think it’s better to just say whatever you feel.”    
  
“If I said what I felt… I’d say something horrible like,  _ why is someone like you even alive?”  _ Mikan let out a sigh, as she curled her fingers like they were the bars of a cage she was trying to keep her mouth in.    
  
“Did you just tell me to go and die?”   
  
“M-maybe?”   
  
“You’re secretly the most lovely, kind person of all aren’t you! Mikan is my hero!”    
Emukae said reaching forward to take her hands.    
  
“Th-that’s not what I meant.”    
Mikan backed away not letting Emukae touch her.    
  
“No, I understand you! From the moment we first met, even before we’ve first met, I’ve always understood you!” Emukae shook her head vigorously, her hair a broken halo around her head like a fallen angel might have. “That’s why I’ll absolutely stay by your side, and never leave you alone again. It’s the least I can do, for the first person to say such kind words to me.” 

  
“P-please stop! I can’t handle all this bullying!”    
  
“If me showering you in affection like this is bullying, I wonder what love is to you.”    
  
“... Not hating the other person.”    
  
“Huh?”   
  
“She never hated me once, and I never hated her.” 

  
“What about Kumagawa-kun?”

 

“I hated him…”    
  
Emukae’s eyes fell in disappointment. “How could you hate someone with such a cute face?” She looked like a puppy begging right now.    
  
  


Mikan’s heart stopped in her chest. As if someone had sent a shock through her so hard that it overloaded her nerves, and fried the musculature of her heart. Her fingers traced over her chest, ribs, and skin, and her fat breasts. She searched for a heart underneath all of that. 

 

Mikan’s usually frantic voice dropped and became low, almost dull sounding. She spoke lifelessly like a zombie might. She spoke like someone who was just tired of it all. “You’re just like him, n-no matter what I did he always forgave me.” 

 

If she cut him, he would laugh and say it’s not her fault for being so clumsy. If she sewed his lips shut, Kumagawa would apologize for annoying her so much with his loud voice, and then he would smile wide enough to break the threads. When she pretended to flirt with him and draped her body all over him, to drive a wedge between him and Enoshima the only person who had ever made him happy, he pushed her away gently and told her it was not good to do those sort of things with people she did not like.    
  
“I’m getting tired of being forgiven…” 

 

Mikan brought her hands to her face, trying to wipe away at the tears. This time she was unsure of the reason she was crying, for the attention, to look like a victim, so someone would pity her. It had been a long time she had cried just because it hurt. Yet still, there was an unbearable wound in her chest, that would not heal even if she wrapped it up with bandages.    
  
“I don’t deserve to be forgiven!” 

  
“It’s okay, Mikan. I’ll lick up all of your tears.”    
  
“S-stop being such a weirdo.”    
  
“I’m not sorry for being weird.” 

 

🦔

 

Walking with Emukae through the streets the two of them continued to chat like they were good friends. It was a casual conversation that Mikan had never had before, because she was too busy assuring she was always the most high maintenance person in the room.    
  
Emukae did not look at her with pity, or disgust, nor did she look down on her. She just kept looking at her exactly as she was. It was unnerving, because Mikan knew what she was and it was not anything pleasant. 

 

“You really don’t have anybody you want to be friends with?” Emukae asked her, just curious and nothing else. Emukae wrapped up in her own pain, did not care about her.    
  
“There was one but…”    
  
She did not want to be around her classmates because the more time they spent around her the more they would come to hate her. That was why she worked as often as she could in the infirmary. 

 

A boy ended up in that infirmary at least once a week. He was perpetually needing to be patched up. The ill boy, Komaeda Nagito. Just like her, when she smiled people frowned. When he praised others people felt like they were being insulted. When he looked up to them, they felt looked down upon.    
  
He was repugnant, just like her.    
He repulsed others, because there was something fundamentally sickening deep inside of him.    
He was an ill boy.   
She was an ill girl.    
  
If there was anybody she could become friends with, she once thought it might have been him. He had no interest in her as a girl. He seemed to know that she was lying when she offered herself to the boys. When other boy’s in class flirted with her, Komaeda suddenly got between them and started rambling to change the topic.    
  
He did not have any friends either. When she tried to make awkward jokes, Komaeda strained himself to laugh in pity, because he knew what it was like to have no one to talk to. The two of them who were terrible at talking to other people could almost talk to each other.

  
Almost.   
They could understand each other, but neither of them wanted to be understood.    
That was why they could never be friends.    
  
“N-nevermind, it’s not important.”    
  
“Oh, then I’ll have to be your first friend,” Emukae shook her hands on the side of her face, for a girl that looked half dead she sure was energetic.    
  
“B-but you want to kill me.”    
  
“Wow, I’m going to kill my first friend, Mikan who’s nothing but kind to me. Even though I promised to always stay by her side, I’m going to kill her. I’m so twisted!” She got closer to Mikan, standing face to face with her as their toes almost touched.    
  
Mikan backed away again. “T-too close.” That was why they could not coexist. Poison only tainted medicine. 

 

“Which one do you want to be in this friendship? The human failure? Or the damaged goods?”   
  
“Wha…?”    
  
“Nevermind, let’s talk about something else I’m bored now. You don’t want to kill Enoshima? That’s kind of crazy, and not in the fun way like me.”    
  


Enoshima Junko, the one person she could never hate.    
The one person who never hated her. 

 

_ “It’s like one of those metaphor thingies, ya know! When satan slithered into the garden of eden, he was jealous because Adam had Eve, and he had nobody. Satan was all like, that feel when no GF. Yeah, the origin of all evil is just a basic beta male bitch boy, that’s kind of typical. Anyway, it’s a metaphor because Adam and Eve didn’t really need the garden, all they needed was each other.”  _

 

There was a time when Enoshima Junko’s voice replaced her own inside her own head. Mikan missed her so much. She spoke so flippantly like nothing mattered to her. She could care less whether you were listening or not, whether you understood her or not.

  
No, she seemed to delight in the fact that others were flustered by her mere presence, that they could only stand in awe at the wake of her. She was someone not meant to be understood by other people. 

 

Mikan remembered how she felt when watching her mother.   
Her mother who was always so confident.    
She thought several times, that a shrinking violet like her could never be the child of such a woman. There must have been a mistake somewhere along the line.    
  
_ “Anyway. I can’t believe you’re making me repeat myself, like saying the same words all over again it’s so boring you know? But I guess I’ll put up with it for you. So come on, fess up, give me a little something something, you never answered my question.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t really get what you were saying.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “God! Look, I don’t do the blushing shy ingenue thing okay? I hate playing childish games when it comes to romance. No, that’s a lie, I love playing little kiddie games more than anything else. But, I’m just gonna say it anyway, just on a whim. You. Me. Will you bite my apple?” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “W-what?” _

 

_   
_ _   
_ _ “Oh my god the innuendo right there was so obvious even I was cringing a little bit! Don’t you get it, Eve bit into the apple because she wanted some dude to love her, even if it meant being cursed together. She was that much of a needy bitch. I’m Adam. You’re Eve. This whole damn school is our garden. So?” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “S-so…?” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Ugh, fine I’ll dumb it down for you. You’re making me so goddamn soft, and the only thing soft about me is my breasts. My breasts are big, but my heart is even bigger you know?  Wanna go on our first date?”  _

 

Their first date was to an all white hospital. 

Enoshima snuck in with her, dragging her by the hand along such a pathway through the hallways that the security cameras would not be able to see them. She stuffed the both of them in a closet.    
  
_ “U-uhmm… what are you doing?” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Obviously shoving you in a closet. Isn’t this where you’ve lived your whole life anyway, Tsumiki-senpai? Well, later we can both come out together. Upupupu, I’m so clever.”  _   
  
They waited for night to come, and for most of the employees to file out. Tsumiki Mikan remembered, the feeling of Enoshima Junko’s pressed tight against hers, wrapped around her, her warmth as they both stayed hidden together. Junko brought her hand forward and clasped it over Tsumiki’s mouth, making it hard for her to breathe. She was so glad to be suffocated by Enoshima. She let whimpers escape from her lips, but she was happy she did not have to talk, because she would just say something stupid and ruin the moment. Her heart raced, she felt feverish, and in her mind she had a delusional fantasy about how beautiful Enoshima’s fingers would be wrapped around her neck. 

 

When night fell they snuck out together, and Enoshima laughed again about her  _ out of the closet _ joke that she was just so damn pleased with herself for making.    
  


They watched late night as a nurse made the rounds through a glass window.    
  
_ “Gosh, isn’t he a hottie? That’s the kind of guy I’d let totally ruin my reputation. If that guy left me on read for a whole day, the moment he texted me back I’d text him within the next minute.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Umm… I guess…Wait, is that Komaeda-kun?”  _   
  
The male nurse was quite handsome and well liked by his colleagues. Enoshima had told her as much during the day time. He was known for his kindness with his patients.  _ “Boring! Senpai, senpai, senpai, him, him, him, how can you even look at a man when the dazzling Enoshima Junko-chan is right here next to you? Can’t we just be two girls. Just Tsumiki-senpai and Junko-chan, and write one of those stories where we hold hands and drive off a cliff together at the end of it?”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “I think you’re getting too far ahead…”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Why do you care about someone like Komaeda-senpai anyway? Fine! Since he’s your boyfriend apparently! I’ll tell you, he collapsed in class a week ago and they didn’t have the setup in the infirmary to treat his symptoms, so fussy little princess that he is he got shipped to this super expensive hospital.”  _

 

The nurse who was kind to Komaeda during the daytime, no matter how much he made it difficult, and Mikan knew first hand that Komaeda liked to screw with any nurse or doctor that tried to take care of him. Mikan only put up with it because she was so used to being mistreated. Yasuke too. That man suddenly raised a hand against Komaeda. 

  
He struck him again and again, leaving bruises all the way down his upper arm, but only in the parts that would be covered by his blue hospital robe. That man’s pretty face distorted, it became quite ugly with his resentment for the boy. All while Komaeda slept, completely helpless underneath him. 

 

_ “Komaeda-senpai’s just pretending to sleep,”  _ Junko whispered in her ears.  _ “Don’t you see, his lip is trembling because he’s pretending not to feel any pain. Or maybe he’s getting off on it, lol!”  _

 

“ _ Sh-shouldn’t we do something?”  _ Being a nurse was the only thing she had to take pride in, and watching Komaeda get stepped on like this was no different than all the times she had been stepped on by other people.    
  


_ “Do you know why the nurse is doing this? It’s because he knows Komaeda-senpai’s diagnosis of Frontotemporal Dementia. His memory is bad, so Komaeda-senpai forgets in the morning. I don’t think he really forgets though, it’s just Komaeda-senpai forgives him, so he pretends it never happned.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “That’s…”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “That’s what life is. People are always looking to vent, you know, because life is terrible, and terribly boring, and it’s such a pain in the ass to deal with. Do you know why everybody hits you like that? It’s because they know you’ll let them. The second someone thinks they can get away with taking their pain out on somebody else, they’ll do it, that’s the only reason.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “W-what…” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “It’s not because you’re ugly or anything.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “That’s unfair. Komaeda-kun doesn’t deserve to be treated like that.”  _

 

_ “They can hurt whoever they want, and they think they’ll be forgiven. So what Tsumiki-senpai? Do you think they can be forgiven?” _

 

“ _ N-no, it’s my fault-” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “You didn’t do anything wrong. Even if you did something wrong, I’d forgive you. You’re really arrogant you know. Even though you are so ugly, you want to be loved. Tsumiki-senpai… that arrogance of yours isn’t boring at all. I can’t hate you for that.”  _   
  
That was the first time she heard those words.    
That was the first time she was forgiven.    
The tree of knowledge. The sin tree.    
Eve.   
AN innate desire, a human desire to try what was forbidden.    
An unforgivable existence, because she ate the fruit.    
Junko saw it, from the very first moment she looked at her.    
She saw.    
  


_ Yeah.  _ _   
_ _ I’m stupid.  _ _   
_ _ I just wanted to be loved.  _ _   
_ _ For a stupid reason like that…  _   
  
Now all the bandages covering her hands were wounds were dirty. She soaked through them with the blood of others, because she was tired of seeing her own blood, her ugly lacerations. 

 

Emukae stopped in front of the abandoned hospital, looking up. “Whoa, this place totally fits your whole creepy nurse aesthetic…”    
  
“P-please don’t call me creepy!” 

 

🦔

 

“I-is that Junko’s hand! You shouldn’t be holding onto that hand, it’s unsanitary!”    
  
Tsumiki said as she appeared in the window, that was just broken enough she could crawl inside to where Yasuke was sitting alone, watching a few of the monitors with his legs kicked up in his chair on the back of another chair. 

  
  
Yasuke nearly fell out of his chair. “Mikan, what the hell? You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were one of those serial killer nurses that only show up in slasher horror films.”    
  
“Th-that’s not a very nice thing to say but I probably deserved it.”   
  
“Why are you here? Do you want me to go find that idiot Hinata so he can go back to playing king of the rejects?” 

  
“R-reject. You’re sharp tongued as always, Matsuda-kun.” Mikan said nervously as she leaned back against the emtpy windowsill, playing with her fingers pressing the pads against each other. She and Matsuda knew each other because they were always in the medical building together. “I r-really love how you always speak your mind.”   
  
“Can you cut that shit out? We both know I’m a foul mouthed bastard who is only good at making girls cry!”    
  
“I’m only crying a little bit!” Mikan shrieked as she wiped at her eyes. “A-ny-way, you’re the one I’m here to see Matsuda-kun. Emukae-san asked me to talk to you.”    
  
“Well, I’m sure she wanted us to talk about something sane.”   
  
“U-um, I don’t meant to point this out but, you’re the one holding onto a severed hand.”   
  
“Touche.”    
  
In a way she envied Matsuda. He had the confidence to say whatever he wanted. It was as if he did not care about anything. From the moment she met him, she noticed how easily he was able to detach himself from everyone around him. He was unconnected from the world, and all of its pain in a way she never could be, and that was because only one connection mattered to him. He would sever all the strings, cut through them with a scalpel for the sake of preserving the one red string tied around his neck.   
  
Mikan walked forward and offered her hand to Yasuke so he did not have to cling to Junko’s. He tucked it away in the pocket of his labcoat, and embarrassed took her hand. “W-we’re really alike you know…”   
  
“I don’t think you have the confidence to pull off that speech, and I’m not a sniveling little bitch like you are.”    
  
“I-I’m sorry for being so ugly.”

 

  
  
“Fishing for compliments won’t work on me. I won’t forgive you for being ugly. You’re the second ugliest girl I know. It must suck, being ugly, and also being second best. You can’t even win at the ugliness contest Just like Kumagawa would probably lose at a world’s greatest loser contest.” 

 

“Gosh, gosh, Matsuda-kun you say a lot of unforgiveable things,” Mikan’s voice suddenly dropped again, down to the pit of her stomach, she spoke with bile and acid. “I don’t mean anything by this, I’m just saying, please don’t get angry at me… but aren’t you just like me? You don’t care about anything else, not even despair, or hope, all that matters is you just want one person to love you back.” 

 

“...”    
  
“And for us, it’s the same person isn’t it?” 

 

Flickering onscreen behind them, Enoshima Junko appeared. She looked like she was dancing in between each of the individual monitors, from screen to screen, from frame to frame, she danced, and neither of them could look away.    
  
“Okay, here’s what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to have a ‘Junko loves me the most’ fight, especially since that bitch would probably enjoy it.”   
  
“N-no, that’s not what I wanted to say. I wanted to sympathize with you Matsuda-kun.”   
  
“You want to sympathize with the worst human being on the planet, that’s bold of you.”   
  
“I-I’m the opposite of bold…. Buuuuuuuut.” She touched a finger to her chin, and tilted it to the side. “I really feel sorry for you. That’s why I want to help you. I mean, I’m just a random Enoshima fangirl of course she doesn’t care about me, but you… you were her childhood friend.” 

  
“God, don’t remind me.”   
  
“And yet, she replaced you so easily.” 

 

Tsumiki Mikan wanted to take the bandages off of Matsuda’s wounds. She wanted to pull the stitches off. Until all of his organs spilled out of his stomach. Until it was all laid bare in front of her.    
  
“...Well, I would have replaced me too. I can’t imagine how awful it must be dealing with me. Actually, I can... “ 

  
  
“But, that’s not what bothers you. What bothers you is you can’t replace her.” Tsumiki Mikan finally hit him in a way that he could not deflect. He never expected it from her, but she was sharp when she wanted to be. She was just usually too afraid of herself to do a single thing, but if she ever lost that fear of herself. “Kamukura-kun forgives you doesn’t he? Because he likes you a whole lot? But you won’t let yourself be forgiven, you won’t let his feelings reach you. You’re cracked just like me, and any love you’re offered is going to pour out.”    
  
“...”    
  
“If your mom, I mean Junko didn’t love you, then you’re marked for life. No one ever will. No wonder you keep pulling the  _ I just want a family and to be loved  _ routine even though you push away every single person you know.”    
  
“Shut it.”   
  
“Your mom didn’t love you enough to keep on living, so nobody can love you enough now.”   
  
“Don’t you dare talk about her with your dirty mouth!” Matsuda stood up and grabbed her by the bandages around her neck. 

 

“Nooo, I’m just trying to say I want to sympathize with you Matsuda-kun. Because, my mother died too. I don’t even know why she ever gave birth to someone like me. I have those feelings too.” She felt his fingers from his one hand squeeze tighter around her neck. “I know you’re afraid that if you let yourself slip for even a moment you’ll hurt Kamukura again, but he’ll just forgive you.”   
  
“...Shut…”    
  
“That’s why you should just betray him.”    
  
“What?”    
  
“That’s what Kumagawa-kun would say right? Look, look he’s right there.” Yasuke’s fingers went slack and he let her go. They both turned their attention towards the screen. Junko dragged Kumagawa’s dead body into her room, for a moment she held a spoon at his eye. Then she muttered  _ nah, never mind  _ and threw the spoon away. “She can’t bring herself to destroy him, even for the sake of despair. She must really love him.”    
  
“I don’t give a shit about their love comedy. I’m done being their third wheel.”    
  
“Do you think she’d cry over either of us if we died? Do you think she’d be lonely like that if we weren’t around.”   
  
Yasuke bit his lip hard. 

  
"Are you lonely?"  
  
"I'm not lonely. I just want you to leave me alone already." 

“Well, we were fine with being nothing to her weren’t we? If we describe it out loud it would sound like a bad relationship, which isn’t wrong… but nobody could understand. What being in her orbit was really like. Nobody can put a name to the feelings she gave you. She’s like a celestial body, like a star far away that you can never reach.” 

  
“Don’t describe her like that. She’s just a shitty person. She’s just like you and me…”    
  
“Huh? What a weird thing to say?” 

He remembered what Kumagawa told him once.  _ She’s just a brat.  _ She was not heaven, or hell, she was not the devil or an angel. He looked back at the screen. Enoshima Junko looked so lonely without Kumagawa.   
  
It was lonely, when the only person who saw you as a human being was gone.    
  
“Anyway, that’s the reason why I could never hate her, because she’s not really even a human being you know? Hey, Matsuda-kun you’re afraid of letting people love you, so isn’t it really comforting for you to just be hung up on Junko forever?” 

  
Matsuda thought about Kamukura, about the naked youth hanging from the tree, about the apple he wanted to share with him. Every time Kamukura was kind to him, he just shirked away.    
  
“Really, because I hate her, and everybody else too.”   
  
“I’m the same! I mean, I want to be liked real bad you know! But, every time I’m around people I can just see how they’re going to hurt me, and as much as I love them I also start to hate them…” She looked back at the screen Kumagawa’s corpse laying there still. “Even Kumagawa-kun was like that. He loved me, but I could only hate him.” 

“Even though he’s my best buddy I have to admit he's pretty unlikable. That guy really needs a higher charisma score than negative two.”    
  
“He’s very charismatic don’t you think? I mean, do you know what’s the way to get close to people. You let them hurt you, and then even when you’re hurting from them, you embrace them and pull them close and say that they’re hurting worse than you are. You accept all of them, even their pain, even their scars. That’s what Enoshima did to me.”   
  
“Oh, so you’re not as stupid as I thought you were,” Matsuda growled at her, low and from his throat.    
  
“I know about abuse, I mean I’ve endured it my entire life it’d be pretty silly not to know.” She laughed, carefree, and then focused on him again her eyes dead. “That’s what Kumagawa-kun does, he manipulates you. He uses his kind lies, his empathy, to control others, he even got Enoshima-san wrapped around his finger. He convinced her that she needs him.”   
  
Yasuke reached forward and grabbed her by both of the shoulders. He shook her lightly. “L-look, I know you’re messed up Tsumiki-san. You’re probably never not going to be messed up but still… don’t say such sad things.” 

 

“Huh?”   
  
“The way you talk it’s like nobody can ever be kind to you. Love isn’t as cruel as you think it is. It makes me too damn sad to think you might really look at the world that way, and I don’t want to cry over a dumb ugly bitch like you.”

Yasuke Matsuda, was being kind.   
He was being kind to the person who only came here to mess with his mind and throw salt in his wounds.   
  
“People are capable of being kind. Kumagawa-kun wanted to be kind to you, he really did. It hurts but, it doesn’t just hurt, there’s more to it than that. I’d be a shittier doctor than I am if I thought it was impossible for people to heal.”    
  
Mikan tilted her head to the side. Her eyes, not comprehending, did not have anything in them.  “No wonder she fell for him. Kumagawa-kun is a lot like you. No, maybe he’s more you than even you are.” 

“Can we stop saying vague shit just because we want to sound deep and meaningful.” 

“For a liar, he’s honest about how kind he is. You’re painfully honest, but you always lie Matsuda-kun.”   
  
Those two were so kind, forgiving a person like her.  _   
_ When she was around them.  
She almost wanted to become a person worthy of their kindness.    
  



	19. Selfless, Cold and Composed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Munakata's backstory is a reference to kare kano and Lucifer and the biscuit hammer.

**Chapter Two: Human Elitism**

**Day Three: Part One**   
  


_Selfless, cold and composed._  
The ideal Munakata Kyosuke.   
  
Currently he was none of those things. He tossed and turned in a bed in the throes of sickness. His fever added splotches of red to his otherwise colorless skin. His neatly combed hair became a mess, slicked hard with his own sweat. There were tears in his tight fitting white suit from his fight with Hinata, where he had been cut all the way down to his skin staining himself further and further with an ugly red. Juzo had ripped his shirt open, tearing the tie off and pulling the buttons apart when Munakata started complaining in a mad feverish rant how hot it was in the middle of the night, and scratching at his own chest like he wanted to claw his skin off, and pry his ribs apart with his own two hands. 

He could see the blurry forms of Juzo and Chisa looming over him. He felt something wet on his face. 

 _Chisa._ _  
__Why are you crying?_ _  
__I…_ _  
__I never wanted to see you cry again._  
  
He tried to move his body, but that body had become nothing more than a prison to him. It felt like heavy chains were wrapped all around him. He could not break the fever, no matter how much his consciousness fought against it. Chisa and Juzo were right there, but he could not reach them, as if a whole ocean’s worth of water separated them. He was staring at them from the other side of the water.  
  
He wondered why couldn’t he be with them?  
Why was there so much distance between them?  
  
His body just burned him.  Existing inside of that body only seemed to hurt him. He remembered the days, where his own body was his worst enemy. The days he spent in constant sickness, as if he was allergic to living.  
  
Swimming in such feelings, such thoughts, he realized he was slowly sinking away from them. He remembered why, why he could never stand together with them. He saw the chains again. Wrapping around his ankle, they tightened, they left purple paint, and discolored welts on his skin. A hand reached out and grabbed the end of the chains pulling him further and further down. 

 _Mother…_ _  
__I…_ _  
__I’m drowning._  
The hand of his mother reached and grabbed the chain, and then pulled him further, further, and further down. He desperately tried to swim to the surface, reaching towards the image of Chisa and Juzo. The reason he could not stand with them. He was sinking. He was always being dragged down. He felt the water pressure around his body threatening to crush him. He was being pressed on all sides, as if the massive weight of the ocean was bearing down his chest. The sickly looking, oil-like, black sludge of dirty water, sloshed back and forth. He tried to breathe but the water filled him up and pooled in his lungs.  
  
He thought he truly deserved this, to die drowning in dirty water. This is all that his real self deserved. He could never be his real self and stand with them, they were both such good people better than he was.  
  
He would only continue to sink away further and further, chained down by past memories. 

When he was younger, he was a shy and much more gentle boy. He had difficulty getting close to others. For the first four years of his life, he almost never talked. One day he made a friend against all odds and decided to bring him home. As punishment for that he was locked in his room for three days. 

  
The rainy scene, Chisa’s tears falling on his cheeks, it made him remember the memories that were far underneath the silent and still water. The same way that raindrops falling from above, caused ripples on the water’s surface. In those rippling members he saw it, a small child with a collar around his neck. 

His mother was abused by her family member, and the result was him. He was his mother’s shame. Instead of sympathizing with her, the rest of his family distanced themselves from his mother and left her all alone to raise him. They were a prominent and well-to-do family and so to them appearance was everything.  
  
The family was so disgusted with what had happened to his mother that they looked away from her. His mother was so disgusted with what had happened to her, she looked away from him, the reminder of her shame. It was a chain of misery and at the very bottom was him tied up in it.  
  
His mother must have felt some sort of pity for him, because she carried him to term, and did not smother him with a pillow when he was just an infant. All affection she had for him must have been left behind with the womb. 

He was a sickly child. He cried a lot. Every time he cried or made the slightest fuss, a hand would reach out and slap him. He did not even remember his mother’s face anymore, but he remembered her hand quite well. He had a hard time sleeping through the night. When his mother got sick of him waking her up, one day she locked him outside. Munakata wandered away in search of help and had a policeman stumble upon him.  
  
He was punished that night for asking that man for help and bringing her even more trouble. He was locked in his room again. He never knew the words of a mother's love, he only ever knew the rattling of chains.   
  
He remembered looking up to see clouds blocking out all light. For a moment he looked back at the door and considered yelling for his mother to let him in. He was a child who’s health was so fragile, he could not even play in the rain.  
  
He stopped himself.  
If he was to raise his voice his mother would certainly punish him.  
He became too scared to say a single word.  
He did not even ask for help.  
  
The rain came down and washed away his screams. He was born with albino skin, deformed, as if everybody else needed to know about his deformity the moment they looked at him. He understood why his mother could not bear to look at his face. Sometimes he wondered if he had been born with colors in his eyes, and in his skin, and in his hair, if his face would disgust his mother a little less, than she could bring herself to be kinder to him. 

The rain came, and washed all of his colors away.  
All that was left was a colorless existence. 

His mother was only like this because she had been hurt in the past. Sometimes his grandfather told him his mother used to smile and open freely, it was like he was talking about an entirely different person. Then Munakata slowly realized this is what despair does to people. It breaks them, and once they become broken they can never be fixed.  
  
The person who his mother used to be would never have hurt him like this.  
If only his mother had died. She would have gotten cured that way. (This is true).  
He thought anything was better than living with an incurable sickness.  
  
One day because he had to walk home alone in the rain from scool (as usual) he was caught with an awful fever. His mother threw him into his room. He could hear her shouting from all the way down the hallway about how they could not afford to go to the doctor. He opened his mouth to meekly apologize, but no words came out. He felt the chains wrapping harder and hard around his lungs.  
  
He was a failure of life. He could drown even in the open air. As he swam underneath the heavy blankets, and desperately tried to reach the surface of the water and gasp for air, as he felt the rain fall on him relentlessly, his mother did not even check up on him once.  
  
A few days later the door opened just a crack.  
Munakata lay absolutely still. He was weighed down by sickness. Even moving was too tiresome for him. His arms and legs had become completely submerged in the swamp, the peat, the black moss, all of it wrapped around him and made it impossible to move. Yet, sleep refused to come for him too, so he lay there, not sleeping and not waking. The water so cold it numbed his body down completely, and yet somehow the absence of pain was worse than the feeling of pain. 

  
He saw his mother’s eye appear in the crack.  
It was so frightening, hair falling down in front of her single crazed eye he thought it was a monster for a moment.  
  
He heard her.  
“Is he dead?”  
Then she slammed the door shut again.  
She did not even bother to check.  
Munakata’s eyes rolled back to glance out the window, and he realized after all this time it was still raining. He thought the rain would never stop. 

The next time the door opened his mother did not stand on the other side. He saw an old man with snow white hair just like him. That man appeared before him, his biological grandfather, and wept.

Munakata had stopped crying a long time ago, because his mother hated when he made a fuss. He had no idea why that old man could cry about his pain so freely, when Munakata himself had grown so numb.

His grandfather took his hand and pulled him out of the water.  
Ever since that day the rainy days stopped.  
Peaceful, unchanging, but tranquil, days with his grandfather underneath a clear sky. 

When he cut himself one day, he hid the wound like an injured animal. His grandfather was so quiet but truthfully he was always thinking of him. When he tried to keep his hand buried underneath the sleeves of his jacket his grandfather called out to him.  
  
“What’s wrong does it hurt somewhere?”  
  
Munakata wondered for a moment if he answered yes, what would that man do to him.  
  
“You were afraid all by yourself, weren’t you?” His grandfather asked.  
  
A hand that should have slapped him, gently patted his head instead.  
When he wet the bed, his mother screamed at him and called him a dog.  
His grandfather changed his pajamas, and did not say another word about it.  
His grandfather told him he did not have to sleep alone if he was too scared.  
His grandfather held him when he went to bed until he fell asleep.  
 _A strange feeling._  
Even though he knew his grandfather was being kind to him. He was afraid. 

 _Why do my tears well up like this?_ _  
__Why does my heart feel so sad?_  
  
He was anxious but at peace. He was happy and worried at the same time. He really oved his grandfather, but he did not feel like he could say whatever he wanted around him. He kept waiting to be slapped. He did not tell his grandfather that he was sensitive to the sun, and because of that he got burns all over his skin. He thought his grandfather would yell. His grandfather just bought an umbrella, and next time quietly walked outside hand in hand together under the same umbrella. Logically he knew his grandfather would never hurt him, and yet he could not rely on him like normal children relied on their parents. He was the closest thing he had to a true parent, yet he could never bring himself to call him father.  
  
Grandfather was both mother and father to him, but to Munakata those were dirty words. They dirited everything they touched. He was dirty, because he had a mother, because he had a father, because he was born in this world.  
  
His mother just disappeared from this world one day, after putting him through all of that for five years of his life. When his mother disappeared his grandfather went to find him. Not only grandfather, but all of his other relatives showed up too.  
  
They all gossiped. He heard their whispers. They must have thought he would not understand. Right in front of him they say. “There’s no hope for a child born of such parents.”  
  
Munakata knew then he had to become a flawless person to prove them wrong no matter what. Even at the cost of his pride, and a happy family with the grandfather who raised him. He wanted to deny the mud that ran through his veins. He wanted to be anyone else other than that woman’s child. He would deny her with everything that he had. Even if he had to destroy himself and remake himself. He had to be everything that his mother was not. His mother who only ever thought about herself, his mother who never once acted like a mother, his mother who took out all of her emotions on him.  
  
Selfless, cold and composed.  
He no longer cared about himself. He was not doing this for himself. He needed to become perfect so he could be of use to others. He was anybody but that woman’s child. 

 _I was…_ _  
__So satisfied with the me everyone else saw._ _  
__Until I met you._

He awoke from his dream and he was no longer chained to his sickly body. He awoke in a dream. A dream of the time before he had met them. His eyes slowly peeled open, as he saw cherry blossoms fall from the tree above. One of them fell underneath his eyelids. 

Spring.  
He never saw any beauty in spring, because it slowly died away and became cold just like him. 

Short-lived cherry blossoms.  
That which blooms withers away and then falls.  
He wondered why people considered cherry blossoms most beautiful not when they were in full bloom, but when they started to wither and fall. 

A sudden wind.  
A storm of flowers.  
No different from the rain for him. He felt like he was going to drown in so much color as pink blotted out the sky. There was far too much color for his fragile white existence. When the cherry blossoms turned from pink to white, when they clung weakly to the branch, that was when they were most like him the absence of life. As he stared with white eyes at the petals that fell down like drops of rain he suddenly realized he was a middle school student and he was late for class.  
  
In school despite his white hair, despite him always coughing, not a single person saw anything wrong with him. He liked the fact that nobody knew about him. They saw him as someone blessed with many talents. It was like he was living free from the past, an entirely different child than the one that his family knew.  
  
“Yukizome is amazing, you know? She’s got a good attitude in general, doesn’t have any flaws. She’s shy, and others are constantly picking on her, but the moment I start to worry about her she puts on a smile like nothing's wrong. It made me realize that kind people like her really exist in this world.”  
  
After class he was gossiping with two of his friends. He no longer remembered what their faces looked like, but they were energetic, normal children, who smiled without even thinking about it.  
  
“What? What’re you talking about, Munakata?”  
  
“That’s exactly you!”  
  
"A class president among class presidents."  
  
“Good looks! Good personality! And on top of that you’re really popular! Everyone calls you the young hope!"  
  
His friend grabbed him by the collar and started to shake him. He liked this. Fooling around. He was able to do it because they did not know how fragile he was. “How can someone like you be so lacking in self awareness? Hey… wow you got a lot of cherry blossom petals on you!”  
  
The collar of his white uniform was open and the flowers had fallen all over him. Munakata smiled, “Oh, this? There’s a row of cherry blossom trees on campus. I fell asleep there because it was so comfortable.”  
  
“Damn, what’s with you? You’re a total airhead! The teacher didn’t even get mad that you were late, you don’t realize what a lucky bastard you are!”  
  
There was always a peaceful atmosphere surrounding him. He left his days of unhappiness far behind him. The tears that he had shed had all fallen away like cherry blossoms in the past, and that miserable branch withered.  
  
Everyday was fun, and he thought he was always happy.  
But every once in awhile, he heard a voice.  
“Are you really having fun?”  
That cold voice always inside of him, like ice that wouldn’t melt.  
  
He had just been talking to his friends about Yukizome and how much she changed lately. No, she never changed. She was always like that. Whenever he was around her, he could sense something warm inside of her, entirely different from his fragile existence, and he thought for a moment that she might burn him up. That she might be the light to finally see him. When he thought of that, he became so shy he could not even look at her, he pretended not to see. And yet, she kept following him no matter how much he pretended to notice.  
  
That afternoon he got a love letter in his locker. He was popular and well liked, and yet every time someone confessed to him he wanted to apologize. 

 _I’m so sorry._  
“Why did you turn me down? Do you have someone else you like?”  
 _No, it’s not like that._  
“Then, it shouldn’t be a problem right? Maybe you’ll start to like me.”  
 _No, I’m sorry…_  
He always felt like something was wrong. It was not that he rejected them, he just could not bring himself to respond to their feelings at all. Even when he saw them start to break down in tears in front of him, his emotions did not waver one bit. When he reached out to comfort them, he merely felt like he was doing it out of obligation, that he was repeating the motions of comforting gestures. 

Munakata lived peaceful school days. He was thoughtful and considerate. He laughed, surrounded by classmates, and yet he could never forget about how he had cried in the past. He felt these peaceful days filled with hope had something artificial to them. Even though he was standing next to them, he felt suddenly that everyone was far away.  
  
He was scared. He wasn’t actually able to feel. Even when he was laughing, even when he joked around with friends… Everything just slid along the surface of his feelings, and slid off of him cooly like ice. No matter how hard he tried, nobody’s feelings ever reached him. 

He thought maybe some part of him had cracked, and all of the colorful feelings that painted people’s lives had slowly drained out of him over time, like colorful sludge.  
They just didn’t know what kind of person he was, that’s why they accepted him.  
They were all friends with the image.  
In reality, he was always alone.

And the days would go by. Those days were full of hope, but to him that hope always felt empty.  
  
In high school he saw Chisa again. Her face was different but the same, the same strength he had always seen inside of her. The two of them stood underneath the cherry trees that lined the entrance to Hope’s Peak. Just for a moment he thought she had followed him there. He longed for that to be the case.  
  
If he tried to gather cherry blossoms in his hand, they would all spill out. The wind would carry them away. The rain would wash them away. They would float in rafts on the river. They would sink into the sewer drains.  
  
He pretended he did not recognize her, because he knew the truth. He knew he still alone.  
Yet, she kept following him like she did in their middle school days. The two of them were always the most eager in the class to volunteer and help others.  
  
“You’re sick, aren’t you Munakata?”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
They were cleaning up after class. Suddenly, she reached up and pressed a cool rag to his forehead. For a moment he was afraid she had seen through him. “You’re just making yourself sicker working yourself this hard, aren’t you? It’s not like you’re fooling everybody, we all know that secretly deep down you’re the nice guy wimp who lets everybody walk over him.”  
  
“W-well, that’s flattering to hear a girl say that about me.” 

“Hey, Munakata…?”  
  
“Yukizome?”  
  
“What if while you take care of everybody else, I'll take care of you. It’s not like I want you to stop caring about other people, because that’s what I like so much about you, but you're going to exhaust yourelf."   
  
“Are you saying…”  
  
“Gosh, Munakata you always seem so serious but you’re really just a dumb boy aren’t you?” Chisa brought her fingers to her face, as her feelings writhed around inside of her. She struggled to make those feelings tangible, to form them into words with her lips. “This isn’t a confession scene or anything! Wouldn’t that be super lame! I mean, you’re always worrying about everyone else too. But… maybe… when I call you Kyosuke, can you remember me? Remember that there’s someone worrying about you too?”  
  
It felt like static had run through his being. He did not have feelings, only undecipherable sounds that prickled the back of his head. He was so surprised, for the first time he had reacted to someone else’s words. 

 _It made an impact on me?_  
He thought for the first time there was someone similar to him in this world. As long as that person existed, he would not have to stand alone anymore. The april breeze sends flower petals dancing in the sky. Under the cherry blossoms in full bloom. He fell in love for the first time.  
  
He finally realized what he wanted, not an empty hope, but a hope that lasted forever.  
He wanted these feelings, his youthful confusion over Yukizome, the warmth he kept inside of him, to keep lasting forever. He wanted her to always follow him no matter where he went.  
  
“You want to be with me…?” He asked Yukizome reluctantly.  
  
“Yeah, I wonder why, every once in awhile you get a look in your eyes like you’re not yourself.”  
  
“Really?” Munakata tilted his head to the side playing innocent, “Is it weird? Does it scare you?”  
  
“No.”

He never wanted her to fly away from him, even if he had to clip her wings. What a terrible feeling. Just like his mother, his love was so disgusting. 

He met a girl at Hope’s Peak.  
He met a boy at Hope’s peak. 

Sakakura Juzo, strong in ways he was not, colorful in ways that he was not. When Munakata felt too weak to walk, he always leaned himself against Sakakura. It was so easy to fall asleep against him, enveloped in his warmth.  
  
He wanted those days to last forever, and yet he could feel they were crumbling. When Juzo thought he was not looking, he grabbed Kizakura by the neck. Munakata watched in silence unnoticed by the others. It was just by coincidence he went looking for Juzo and happened to find him like this.  
  
“You’re getting too close,” Juzo said, slamming Kizakura into the wall.  
The silence crumbled.  
The wall crumbled.  
The standstill crumbled.  
The uneasy peace crumbled.  
  
“Munakata actually hates it when someone other than him, boy or girl gets close to Yukizome.”  
  
Kizakura tilted his hat looking confused. He was so easygoing about everything, even back then. “What? You’re talking about Munakata?”  
  
“The Munakata you know is a fake. The real Munakata has a violent temper. He’s very possessive.”  
  
“If Munakata has a problem he can talk about it with me, we’re friends after--”  
  
“I don’t want him to get his hands dirty with your blood. That’s why I’m telling you this now. Deep down he’s always been angry at something… look he’s not a bad guy he knows Yukizome would never betray him but this isn’t about what’s logical.”  
  
All he lies crumbled. 

The image crumbled.  
And then, the fantasy was gone.  
And then, he had to learn to live without it.   

“You’re kidding? Munakata? That kid doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. He basically wears himself down doing everything for everybody else, he barely ever thinks about himself.”  
  
Juzo shook his head. “He’s a nice guy, but the only person that Munakata is unconditionally kind to… is Yukizome. He doesn’t even see me that way. Munakata allowed me to be friends with her, because he knows that I would never touch her.” 

Kizakura laughed it all off. “Jeez, are you sure you’re not the one with temper Sakakura? You sound like you’re reading way too much into this.”  
  
That was the truth. That was reality. That was ruin.  
At that moment he knew Sakakura had seen his true self, so he decided to always keep a distance between them. 

Sakakura Juzo, the moment he saw him he had been drawn to him. He was so straightforward about everything, and his eyes were so clear. He decided everything for himself, made his own choices, and knew exactly how he wanted to live. Munakata did not believe he was helping others for good reasons, he just thought it was wrong for someone like him to desire for himself.  
  
That was why Juzo was color.  
That was why Juzo was light.  
  
That was so extremely different from him. He kept attending his matches, over and over again, because Juzo’s profile had made a strong impression on him.  
 _I want to know him._ _  
__I want to know what he’s thinking._ _  
__I want to hear… about many more things. Does he have worries and hesitations too? Does he feel the loneliness that I always carry with me? I want to know more and more._  
His feelings overflowed…  
He had never desired anything so directly. 

 _Until I met you._ _  
__Why was it you?_ _  
__All I am is a fake._ _  
__I can’t wear my heart on my sleeve like you can. I’m too fragile._ _  
__Maybe within me there’s another me._ _  
__The real me._ _  
__That’s what I thought, and I thought that was bad._ _  
__I wasn’t supposed to realize that._ _  
__You’re my light Juzo._ _  
__Just by existing, light makes it clear where the darkness is._ _  
__There is a darkness within my soul_  
 _To be honest I…_ _  
__I…_ _  
_

“I’ve always hated you…”

Munakata peeled open his eyes, looking through the haze of the fever. He saw something like a shadow loom over him, except it was nothing like a shadow. It was his shape and form, and it was all of the colors that he was missing, mixed together in a miasma.  
  
That other him.  
That real him.  
Opened his mouth, and Munakata saw something empty in that expression.  
  
“That’s why you keep them on such a short leash don’t you? You know you can’t be like these wonderful people, and yet you still want them around you. You would break their legs, just so they could not walk away from you because you’re afraid of them leaving you alone.”  
  
“...No.”  
  
“How is that any different from what your mother did to you?”  
  
“I…”  
  
“You’ll never be anyone else other than her son.”  
  
“J… Ju… Juzo…”  
  
“Take a good look at them. You’re really bothered by the fact that they’re completely separate individuals from you aren’t you? The joy of contact is fleeting, that isn’t your goal. You have to chain them up to you, because without them you can’t go on living…”  
  
“...”  
  
“Poor thing,” His colorful shadow which looked as messy and mixed together as a child’s finger painting, its colors in constant turmoil, mixing, sloshing about, as if they were in pain, as if there was something foul in all those colors, reached towards him. He put his hand over Munakata’s neck, and slowly started to strangle him. “You really thought there was hope for someone like you?” 

In reality, Munakata had suddenly stopped breathing. Juzo who had been told by Chisa to sit by his bedside watched in a panic, with little idea of what to do. He pushed down hard on his chest, but it made little difference. The last thing he had heard Munakata mutter before having this attack of shock was.  
  
 _“I’ve always hated you…”_ _  
_

And yet Juzo could not care less. He had forced his mouth over Munakata’s and forced air into his lungs. For a first kiss it was terrible, all he tasted was regret, and bitter medicine on Munakata’s lips.

When Munakata’s breathing calmed down, Juzo refused to let go of his hand. He had no idea what to do, but he knew he was going to never let go of Munakata. Even if Munakata threw him away, he was still more important than Juzo was. 

“It’s fine if you hate me, just don’t hate yourself please…” Juzo pleaded with him softly. He realized no matter how old he got, he was just a damn kid that could only whine helplessly like this. He was no good to Munakata. “Stop trying to hurt yourself like that… don’t you realize you’re hurting the person that me and Yukizome care about so much?” 

On the other side of reality, swimming in his own dreams.  
Munakata saw a hand reaching out for him in the water. 

A strong, rough, dark hand, that pulled him up.  
  
Munakata Kyosuke tried to breathe, in spite of the rain that would never leave him. 

 

🦔

 

Kamukura Izuru stood there, his dark hair falling down in front of him, he looked like a child that had been left alone in the rain. That was Matsuda Yasuke’s impression as he peered up from behind the manga book he held in front of his face. He had reread this volume of magical girl manga several times. In fact, he was not even reading it anymore. He just wanted something to block his face.  
  
The two of them were standing alone in a separate room of the hospital. Sonia came back to them in tears, but she refused to explain to them what had happened. She had not found any of the medicine they needed to treat the infections in Tanaka’s wounds. Every pharmacy they found in this city had its shelves stripped bare and only over the counter medicine left. Both Yasuke and Matsuda started to wonder if there was anybody else in this city besides the ones in this game. Yasuke sat there watching quietly, because he had yet to tell Kamukura about Mikan’s visit last night.  
  


  
Sonia’s slept into the morning, still clutching onto Gundham’s purple scarf. She wrapped it around herself like it was a snake protecting her. Part of Yasuke suspected she was not as sad as she pretended to be, but put on a show of crying so Hinata would not question what he was doing. His first instinct was always how he could be of use to others. Yasuke for once did not voice this observation either.  
  
In general Yasuke thought everybody around him was happier when he kept quiet. The two of them sat in a different room in the hospital, Yasuke had noticed there was a monitor in this room too. He wondered if Kamukura placed them in here. Kamukura stood over a body on a stretcher. The ruined hospital was their base of operations but it only had a few things left behind for them to use. 

 

That body belonged to the Ultimate Imposter, Kamukura had cut his chest open in a y-front pattern the same way that Yasuke once did to him when he remodeled his body. It was an autopsy. To find the cause of death. Kamukura looked back to Yasuke. “You know, technically you’re the only real talented person here. You could help me a little more.” 

  
“I am helping, I’m providing witty commentary.”  
  
“A predictable response. Let me rephrase that, you could be more useful.”  
  
“You’ll have to pay a consultation fee.”  
  
“Fine, I’ll pay it. How much?”  
  
“Fifteen million.”  
  
“Sure. I paid that much for a sticker anyway.”  
  
“A sticker?”  
  
“Enoshima made me pay fifteen million for for a sticker that said _I’m sorry for being born stupid._ ”  
  
Yasuke snorted. His ever-present scowl cracked just a little bit. Hinata was so disappointed that that of all things was what finally made Yasuke smile. “That was actually pretty funny. God, I hate her.”  
  
“That’s such an obvious lie, tell a more interesting lie at least.” Kamukura’s forehead pinched in annoyance. Negative emotions were easier for him to express than positive ones. “Neither of you is funny. I know because I have the talents of the Utlimate Comedian. Also, you’re the worst.”  
  
“I never said I wasn’t.” Yasuke put his manga volume down and looked over Imposter-kun’s body. “Yep, he’s definitely dead. I’ll take my consultancy fee now.” 

 

“Take this seriously.”  
  
“That’s a pretty terrible thing for the Ultimate Comedian to say.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Oh, did I hurt your feelings? I thought you didn’t have any. Does the world’s hope really need someone like me clinging to him? You can do this all on your own.”  
  
Yasuke watched Kamukura turn his back to him. His shoulders were perfectly square, and his torso was so naturally bulky that he barely fit into his clothes. Yasuke kept thinking one of the buttons of his suit would pop off if he moved too much. As Kamukura sat down, Yasuke saw the muscles on his back move as he leaned all the way foreward. The part of his back which dipped down into his ass, Yasuke saw, his white shirt stuffed tightly into his black pants. Yasuke for a moment remembered the day that Kamukura had once been under him, his hands that had slowly sculpted that part of his body, he touched him in a way more intimate than lovers, he reached inside of him.  
  
“You don’t understand, I don’t care if you’re a terrible person or not. No matter how much you put yourself down, there’s still something real inside of you, something warm, I can feel it. But it’s different for me…I can only ever be a fake.”  
  
“What? Because I have talent? You sound like that idiot Komaeda?”  
  
Komaeda’s name sent a shiver through Kamukura’s body. At the sight of those great shoulders shaking, something inside of him trembled. Yasuke almost wanted to lean against him from behind and hold him steady. 

  
“You had horrible things happen to you, and you overcame them. Nothing ever happened to me, and yet I still acted like I was the only person in the world that was suffering. I didn’t do a single thing, I just signed my name on a consent paper. It was so easy.”  
  
Yasuke knew that was a lie. He watched Hinata survive those consecutive surgeries. He watched Hinata slowly die, and then just as slowly come back to life. There was a point in time the others wanted to throw him away as a test subject, just put him in a mental hospital under a fake name for the rest of his life, but Hinata was strong enough to slowly piece himself back together. 

 

  
  
No matter how many times Yasuke cut him apart, Hinata looked at him with such kind eyes. He was willing to forgive someone like him. _Even though I… I was just cutting you apart because Junko told me to._

 _  
_“You still love Hope’s Peak don’t you? After all this time. I can’t say the same, that place never felt like a school to me.” All Yasuke remembered was locking himself away in the biology department, slowly forgetting if he was a researcher, or if he was just another research subject too. “Yeah, sure I was talented. I thought I was hot shit, but they basically only cared about how I could contribute to the Kamukura project. I’m no different from you, I’m just as expendable.”  
  
“It’s different.”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
“You had a talent, you worked hard and had something to show for it…”  
  
Yasuke grabbed his unwashed shirt and pulled on it. He wanted to put on display what a wreck of an existence he was for Kamukura. Then maybe Kamukura would learn, then maybe Kamukura would stop forgiving him. “This? You really think this is something?” He said referring to himself.  
  
He never wanted to be any-one special. He thought just being special to one person was enough for him. If only talent did not exist. If only Junko was born a normal girl. They could have grown up together. They would have loved each other without wanting to kill each other. The same kind of people Hinata overlooked and dismissed as ordinary, Yasuke had only wanted Junko to be able to live a life like that. He just wanted to be a part of that life.  
  
Then maybe if they were not so broken, if they were just normal kids, they could have found a boy with white hair carrying around a white stuffed rabbit. They could have played with him too in the sand box.  
  
“Then how do you think I feel? I have all the talent in the world, and yet I still just make stupid mistakes. I can’t do a single thing for other people, because I only think of myself.”  
  
“Yeah, that sounds like a serious personality flaw. Do you want me to operate on your brain again to try to fix it?”  
  
“Why do you always prattle on in such boring ways…”  
  
He knew Kamukura was tired of his insincere statements. Yasuke was going to keep telling lies though, nobody but that one person was allowed to see his true face. He put his hand on Kamukura’s shoulders and leaned over him, touching his forehead against the Izuru’s. His forehead was cool to the touch, and from the contact Yasuke could feel all the stitch mark shaped scars he had left on Kamukura.  
  
He wanted to run his fingers over them and then slowly pull out the stitches again. He wanted to reach inside the other once more, after surgically pulling him apart, and feel that warmth. Yasuke’s lips twitched, and then pulled tighter. “I know how I can fix you. How about I just drive a pick into your eyeball, and scrape off your brains. Then you won’t need to worry about any of this anymore, you can be thrown away like the damaged goods you are.”  
  
Kamukura closed his eyes. Yasuke wondered why, what exactly he was expecting. He felt a little sad, getting this close he could not even cause the slightest twitch of emotion on Izuru’s face. “It doesn’t matter how many times I stitch you up, there’s something inside of you that’s unfixable so…” Yasuke did not even know if he was trying to piss Kamukura off or sweet talk him anymore.  
  
“You’re my classmate too.”  
  
“Huh?” As Kamukura opened those eyes, he remembered why he hated Junko’s red eyes so much. His whole life, she was the only person that ever looked at him. He felt that if she looked away he might just disappear.  
  
“You’re a part of class seventy seven just like me. I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy your time at that school. Let’s go back with everybody else, and be students again. Sonia, Gundham, Komaeda, Fuyuhiko, Peko, they’re all going to be your classmates.”  
  
Yasuke remembered the first time another boy offered to be his friends, dressed in all pitch black, with a pure white smile. He said to Kamukura the same thing he had back then. “I already have one friend, she’s too much trouble so I don’t need any more.”  
  
“If you had more friends that just her, you would be able to see her more clearly.”  
  
No way.  
There was no way him and Kamukura could ever be normal friends.  
Kamukura was… his victim.  
That was their only relationship.  
Yasuke felt only the delicate, fragile strings of a spiderweb were holding him up now, and then one voice crashed through that moment like a stone. _“If it’s not Junko, then no one ever will.”_  
  
He rocked back with the momentum of the thought. Suddenly a beeping arose from both of their watches, and text scrawled across. **Side Quest: There will be medicine you need available on this street just before sunrise, but only one team can claim it.**  
  
Juzo wanted to cure Munakata, they had to treat Gundham’s injuries, and Medaka suddenly decided to take care of that sick girl. Hinata stood up before Yasuke could even say anything. 

“I’m going to go talk to Miss Yukizome. We can make a deal about Gundham… because, she’s the one who really belongs with this class, not me.”  
  
“Wait, don’t go alone,” Yasuke knew he was a hypocrite. He didn’t care at this moment. He said to Kamukura something he had said to Komaeda once a long time ago, “Because, you’re the type of guy who’s completely useless on your own, you know?” 

  
“I thought you made me into the world’s hope.”  
  
“Well, you’re a pretty shitty hope.” 

 

🦔

  
“Nope,” Chisa could not lie, so she told them flat out what their answer was.  
  
Kamukura’s eyes shook as he realized he had miscalculated. He still saw the Chisa from the past. The one who always came to talk to him by the fountain with Chiaki, and then consoled him and told him he did not need to be talented. He wondered if Junko’s claws had really sunk that deep into the woman in front of him, or if there was just a second face he had never seen. 

The three of them stood in the middle of the street, underneath a lamp that flickered on and off. Munakata’s team was holed up in an abandoned cram school rather than abandoned hospital like them.  
  
Even with analysis, Kamukura could see nothing of that woman’s face. As if her kind smile had just fallen off. He was constantly worried about what other people thought of him. That was why, when they showed him a kind smile, and reassured him, he was easily fooled.  
  
“Yukizome-sensei, I know what Munakata told you about me but I never wanted to be like this… I just wanted… to be a part of your class too.”  
  
Yasuke noticed once again that Hinata’s overemotional and insecure words slipped out of Kamukura’s mouth. 

“Sorry, when I told you that you were just as free to become whoever you wanted to be as all the talented students, I lied,” She held up her bracelet with a command forbidding her to lie. It never said she had to tell this much of the truth. “You can’t become part of our class, because you’re in the reserve course.” 

“Why…? Why did you lie?” 

Playfully, Yukizome touched a finger to her lips.  
“That’s because…” 

 _I’m a big fake._  
My kind smile.  
 _Is just for show._  
My good personality.  
 _Is a big fat lie._  
I’m not a fairy tale princess, I’m the queen of vanity. 

If this was her true self, Chisa thought with a fleeting regret that she really should have just kept lying.  
  
Yasuke finally spoke up. “Jeez you’ve seen one two faced bith you’ve seen them all. I hate to steal your line, but this is boring…” Yasuke pulled all of his messy hair back, and looked forward with clear eyes. “You don’t want to be a part of class 77-b anyway. That’s where they stuck all the problem kids.” 

Kamukura looked back silently at Yasuke.  
  
“You never wondered why so many traumatized kids were in one class? I mean they say misery breeds genius, but, there was an especially high concentration in that one class. It’s like that damn school offered them up to Junko on a silver platter.”  
  
“What do you know about her…?” Yukizome’s eyes narrowed at the mention of her name. 

  
“I’m the one who knows her best. I’m the kind of terrible person who can still love her, knowing what she did to you. I love every part of her, even those hands that broke so many people.” 

  
“You’re quite the romantic…” Kamukura said behind him, his voice arid.  
  
“They say Frankenstein is a Romantic hero after all.” 

Yasuke wished the two of them could just forget about everything else and keep talking like this, what Kamukura would call useless and boring conversation. “They let a bunch of kids in that didn’t pass the mental health exam, because they were desperate for numbers. Then, they stuck the local drunk with teaching them hoping they’d all skip class and not bother anybody.”  
  
Yasuke continued to run his mouth.  
  
“I really should have been in that class too, but I’m a useful screw up instead of a useless one so they put me to work in the Kamukura project instead. Then, Miss Yukizome transferred in, and I bet she’s the type of person who wants to fix others so she can ignore what’s broken about herself.” 

“You’re really cynical, Yasuke-kun,” Chisa said, not even reacting to any of his accusations. If she attempted to deny it, would that be a lie too? 

“Am I romantic or cynical? Just pick one,” Yasuke muttered.  
  
“I wanted to be a good teacher to them,” Yukizome Chisa’s genuine smile, was a little bit sad. “I wanted to be the good person that Kyosuke saw me as…” 

 _Ah. That was it. That was what was pissing me off._ Yasuke wanted to care about other people. He wanted to get along with his classmates. He used to think he could overcome the past and become a good person.  
  
None of that mattered before Junko. Junko was his most important thing, and everybody else was second. He still did not know whether Junko had manipulated him into doing this, or if it was all on his own. Maybe Mikan was right and he wanted to be a part of her orbit.  
  
Chisa was Munakata’s friend first, and a person second.  
Yasuke was Junko’s childhood friend first, and a person second.  
  
They both rebuilt themselves around another person. They wanted to keep living for that person, and refused to live in any other way. That was why no matter how hard they tried, they could not bring themselves to care about others, everything else would always be second.  
  
That was why Kumagawa told him, that even if Junko loved him back, he would never have her. The person he was in love with was never her in the first place.  
  
 _Damnit._ _  
__I’m the only friend you have._ _  
__Why did we spend all that time together?_ _  
__We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives looking after each other._ _  
__What’s the point if you were alone all that time?_  
 _Why didn’t you just tell me?_ _  
__I didn’t want you to lie to me._ _  
__Even if you told me what a horrible person you were from the start, I would have still wanted to be your friend, because I’m horrible too._  
  
“It’s not about me we have to help Gundham-” Hinata finally broke through the silence.  
  
“Are you going to help him like you helped Chiaki?” Chisa touched her forehead as if she was just remembering something. “That’s right, Kyosuke told me. You’re the one who killed her.”  
  
Silence.  
Kamukura had nothing to say.  
Just like usual he did nothing.  
  
Yasuke was the only one to speak up, as he grabbed Kamukura by the hand and started to drag him away. “Jeez, no wonder Junko always wins…” He complained, and griped, “These heroes are so shitty.” 


	20. Girl Dissection

**Chapter Two: God Punishes the Elite** **  
** **Day Three: Part Two** **  
  
**

“... What, Zenkichi? What are you staring at? We’re in class.” 

 

Medaka tilted her head to the side as she saw Hitoyoshi sitting in the desk next to her, his head turned back. He was staring at her the same way a student would stare outside a window to daydream, of course as always she was completely oblivious to the emotions behind that mask. 

  
People smiled when they were happy and cried when they were sad, with no deception beyond that.  Kurokami saw the world this way. That was how it always was for her. That was why someone like Kumagawa messed so hard with her perceptions.    
  
Kumagawa?    
Who was that?   
It was just her and Zenkichi in this room and nobody else. She heard a teacher’s voice droning on, but there was nobody standing behind the podium. She was surrounded by empty desks, some of them were piled on top of each other, and the whole room looked abandoned. 

 

“I’m looking at you.”   
  
“I can’t be that interesting. Pay attention to the lecture.” 

  
Now that she thought about it, her and Zenkichi were not in the same class, and they never attended any classes together. They hung out after school or at student council. This seat next to him was usually reserved for Shiranui, his best friend. Even though she was his childhood friend she never got to sit next to him like this.    
  
“I heard they opened a super good ramen place. Let’s go there on the way home, I’ll treat ya.”    
  
“You really have that much money to spend on taking girls out to ramen? Your mother spoils you far too much.”    
  
“Hey! I don’t want to get spoiled by the girl who’s set to inherit the whole world! I refuse to be condescended by the spoiled princess herself.” 

 

Had they ever bickered like this?    
  
“Okay, fine. You’re so loud. I’ll give you permission to take me out. No touching me in public though, the idea of us going out without first being married is scandalous enough.”    
  
“She doesn’t even realize how haughty she’s being, that makes it worse somehow…”   
  
“Can I come home to your place afterwards? I want to take a bath. We can take a bath together if you want to save time.”   
  
“Ehhhhh? Holding hands is off limits but you’re fine with taking a bath together?”   
  
“What’s wrong with that? We took baths together when we were five. You were so much cuter back then, now you’ve grown all gurmpy.”    
  
“I’m grumpy because a certain girl’s always giving me trouble!” Zenkichi snapped back at her. He raised his voice in the middle of lecture and nobody got mad at him. It was weird for him to break the rules like that. Medaka always followed the rules, because the rules were the rules. Everybody had to follow them. If she followed them she was no different than anybody else. “You know, a lot has changed since we were five.”   
  
“Really, I don’t think anything has changed at all.”    
  
“Well, I guess you would see things that way. It must be nice seeing the world the way that you do…” Zenkichi ran his fingers through his unkempt spiky hair. Medaka feeling tempted, held her hand out reaching for him.    
  
“Huh, what do you mean?”   
  
“Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Besides, I’m already dead.”   
  
When he said that, Medaka’s hand passed straight through his head like he was just an image in front of her, a ghost, a memory of a childhood friend. “...Huh…?” There were few things in the world that could render such an eccentric girl speechless.    
  
“I died because you left me behind, you know. Don’t you feel any responsibility?”   
  
“...”    
  
“If I hadn’t met you, I’d be living a normal life with my mom. I’m sure meeting me made you happy, but did you ever once think about how I felt?”    
  
“Sorry….”   
  
“Haha! It’s not like the Medaka-chan I love to get this shy!”    
  
“B-but I… I protected everyone. I did the best I could.”   
  
“But, I died. Kumagawa died, too.” 

  
Medaka looked down at her own hands, but her normal nails cut short were gone. Instead she was wearing glossy, acrylic fake nails of a deep crimson color. Those hands…. Those hands, those hands, those hands, those hands, those hands, those hands, those familiar hands. 

 

Those picked a knife up off the floor. Those hands reached forward to gently caress Hitoyoshi’s face. Those hands stabbed him. Zenkichi smiled back at her, as if forgiving her for what she did. His own life was worth so little to him. He pulled her into an embrace, but all that did was drive the knife further into his body. She could not hold him back, so slowly he fell backwards the knife slowly pulled out of his wounds.    
  
He fell on the floor limbs splayed out like a doll, like a toy broken in her hands.   
Her hands.    
Her hands, her hands, her hands, her hands, her hands, her hands did this.    
Her hands raised the knife in the air once more, and in a gruesome crimson arc she stabbed it into his chest tearing it open. She stabbed. She stabbed. She stabbed. She stabbed him with her hands.    
  
Each stab felt like visual poetry. Medaka could not remember the world being so colorful before this, was red ever so bright? Zenkichi had everything inside of him, all the squishy bits, he was so different from a hollow girl like her.    
  
“So cold, man! Aren’t we best friends?” Zenkichi’s corpse spoke to her. “She did this to her own childhood friend too, you two are both so coooooold!” 

 

Medaka reached her hand forward and smashed his head because she could not bare to hear him talk anymore. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking at a shaky reality in front of her.    
  
Blood on her hands.    
Her own blood.    
She had punched a television screen in front of her, a whole pile of them was playing in a broken into electronics store. Every single monitor in the city was hijacked, and they played a live broadcast of the killing game twenty four seven.    
  
Medaka had just watched Enoshima stab Zenkichi after Kumagawa died. Yet, when she saw that scene she could not help but feel it was her own hand that stabbed him. As if her and Enoshima were overlapped, far closer than any two people should have been. 

 

All she had ever wanted was one person who could understand her, and see the world the same way she did, because she was a one of a kind genius she assumed she would always be alone. She finally found someone like that, and in a cruel twist of fate it was Enoshima. The person who thought the same way as her was the worst human being ever, how did that reflect on her?    
What a joke.    
Medaka was sure someone was laughing at her. God was laughing.    
She could hear him. 

A hand reached out and took hers. It was wet, slicked with seat, pale, and trembling and yet there was a strange kind of strength to that hand/. She looked down to see Nanami standing beside her, her expression cross. “It’s not ladylike to go so quiet. If you’re going to insist on continuing to prattle at me in such a boring way, then at least keep up your side of the conversation.”   
  


“Nothing is wrong. I live a perfect life. I’m spoiled by it’s perfection.”    
  
“Oh my, oh my, you’re a terrible liar you know that?”    
  
“Nobody ever taught me to lie.”    
  
“Oh, I see. You’re the kind of perfectionist who if they don’t get it right on the first attempt they immediately give up. Really, how awful.” She took Medaka’s hand in hers and and dragged her to the curb. She tore some of the fabric from her own robe, and wrapped it around Medaka’s hand, her fingers slowly curling inwards like the petals of a flower trying to close itself off. “You’re lucky I’m used to taking care of myself. Hmph, this feels like I’m a mouse pulling a splinter out of the paw of a lioness.”    
  
“Why does everybody compare me to a beast? I’m not a furry like Enoshima...Didn’t you say you had parents?”    
  
“Parents?” She tilted her head as if trying to remember. “Ah, that’s right. I had those. What an unpleasant thing to remember. They disappeared awhile back.”    
  
“Disappeared?”   
  
“I don’t remember what they look like now, what they smelled, or tasted like.”    
  
“That’s a weird thing to say.” 

  
“I think it’s a fun game to ominously foreshadow darker things on the horizon like that,” Nanami laughed, quiet, in between her haggard breathing. “You have a very forgettable face too. Don’t wander too far off, because you look the same as everybody else to me.”   
  
“Ah, it’s nice hearing that…” As she felt the warmth spreading on her hand, from Nanami’s icy touch she remembered there was a boy who once held her hand like this. He was far away now, but even when the two of them had been close they… “Do you ever feel like, even if you’re laughing and getting along with friends, even if you’re surrounded by people, you’re not part of the moment… like you can’t read the atmosphere or something. I’m supposed to be blessed with more gifts than most people, but it always feels like… like..” 

  
  


  
Laughing, surrounded by classmates, and yet she suddenly felt like everyone was far away.    
She was scared.    
Is that why Enoshima Junko stabbed her own childhood friend?   
It was the only way to get close enough to feel his warmth. She wanted to viscerally feel him, to be in the moment with him, even if it was only for a few seconds. No, that was stupid. She did not want to understand a person like that.    
  
“No, I don’t feel that way.” Nanami said immediately, casting her cloudy eyes to the side. “I don’t really want to admit to having feelings in the first place.”    
  


“I’m sure you have lots and lots of feelings. I feel things all the time,” Medaka said optistimically. But, was it really optimism if you just always thought that way? Maybe something was wrong with her head the same way there was something off about Makoto.    
  
“How gross.” 

 

“You really are like a big sister type, Nanami! So cool and composed!”   
  
“Hmph. I’ve been insulting you this entire time, you just refuse to hear it.”   
  
“But isn’t it natural for older sisters to tease?” Medaka remembered a face covered in bandages, a face she could not see hidden away from her. “Well, I don’t really know because my older sister ran away from home when I was young and we didn’t really act like sisters.” 

 

If she tried to picture an older sister Ikusaba Mukuro came to mind before her own sister.   
Why was that?    
Wait, what if her sister was in trouble?   
They said they killed the entire Kurokami family, was that a lie?   
Why hadn’t she thought of that until now. 

 

She could not spare a thought to her sister, because thoughts of Zenkichi flooded uncontrollably into her head. She was always next to him since she was young, but she did not understand him. She wanted to know what was inside of him. She wanted to pull a shirt off, and reveal his ribcage underneath naked for her to see. She wanted to know him better than anyone else did.    
  
If it gave her a direct pathway to his heart, then cutting up his chest was fine.    
If she finally got to be close to him, she was fine slicing him opening.    
No. She didn’t think that way. That woman’s thoughts were in her head.    
She did not want to dissect her one and only friend. 

 

“I think it’s normal to be worried when you see your friend hurt in front of you, Medaka-chan,” Nanami reassured her softly.    
  
“What is normal?”   
  
Medaka asked and received no answer. 

 

🦔

 

_ Zenkichi.  _ _   
_ _ I just want to hear your voice.  _ _   
_ _ See.  _ _   
_ _ I had this dream where you were fine without me, and happily in love with a girl you don’t need. _

 

__ Medaka was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, waiting for the sun to rise. She was the ultimate enemy of every minus, a morning person, so her internal clock was out of whack by always  being awake at night like this, or maybe she was just completely unused to darkness. 

 

Suddenly, the smell of rotting filled the air. She remembered her hallucination with Zenkichi’s corpse and immediately looked around in a panic, only to see a girl she did not recognize, and Tsumiki.    
  
Medaka stood up and held an arm in front of Nanami. Emukae pulled at the ribbon around her neck awkwardly. “Oh, it’s not like I’m going to kill some little girl I don’t even know. What kind of sicko do you think I am?”    
  
“You are sick in several ways…” Mikan said, deadpan.    
  
It was strange to see such a timid girl joking around like that. Then again, Medaka didn't really get sarcasm. It must have been a minus thing. “Oh no, she’s sick too? Does she need help?” 

 

“No, she’s pretty much helpless… and th-that’s something coming from me.” Mikan suddenly made eye contact for a split second, and her eyes darted away. She wanted attention, but she hated being seen. “You’re really so kind worrying about trash like us.”    
  
That was basically a Komaeda line, Mikan realized it after it already left her lips.    
  
“Besides! I couldn’t care less if everyone died as a result of failing this week’s mission,” Emukae poudly complained with a smile on her face.    
  
Mikan sadly shook her head. “And you almost sounded sane for a second there, almost…”    
  
“Yeah, that’s the right way to think.” It took a moment for the words that Emukae had said to register. “No wait, that’s completely wrong!” 

 

“You really do not listen to when other people speak do you? Are normal humans too boring for you?” Nanami said with a sigh. 

 

“See, she’s that kind of sick person,” Mikan muttered again. The kind of mutterings she usually kept to herself just naturally came out when Emukae was around.    
  
“No, no you’re wrong. You keep getting it wrong what kind of sicko I am. I’m the type of person who doesn’t care about other people’s pain, because my own pain is so much more important.”    
  
“D-don’t say that so proudly,” Mikan admonished her.    
  
“You’re just saying that because you’re jealous you don’t have any pride.”   
  
“If having pride turned me into a person like you, then I’m glad I live in constant shame…”    
  
Mikan and Emukae were bickering. Mikan never bickered with someone like this before, the moment someone disagreed with her about literally anything she just immediately apologized and assumed they were right and wished the conflict would go away.    
  
It was a winning strategy.   
Actually, it was a losing strategy.    
  
“Hmmm? What is this? Flirting, in public? So indecent,” Medaka said.    
  
“I-I’m not her friend. I’m her slave…” Mikan said her face turning strangely red, as she played  with her fingers in front of her face. “Oh, but if you were to save me from her I’dbe so grateful, I would  do anything you wanted me too.”   
  
“Mikan you’re being weird again,” Emukae said taking all of that in stride, “Kurokami-san should you be talking? I mean you love all human beings while loving Hitoyoshi-kun at the same time right? Doesn’t that just make you an adulterer?”    
  
“A-a-dulterer? I’m so sorry, Zenkichi.” Medaka immediately started to bow her head, performing the ultimate dogeza she had boasted about earlier. “I’ve lived a life of much shame.”   
  
“I don’t think you’re allowed to quote No Longer Human, unless you’ve actually failed at something once in your life,” Emukae said, a look of disgust on her face for the beautiful girl in front of her. 

“I don’t really care if you live or die,” Emukae tilted her head to one side, and then the other, “So do you want to become friends? I mean, Mikan and I are the type of person you like the most aren’t we? People that need to be pitied and fixed.” 

 

Mikan and Emukae. Medaka did not even know the name of the second girl, but she reminded her so much of Kumagawa that she felt like she already knew her. Those two were the types who wore every wound on their body on display. Their every trembling movement was arthritic, they made it clear just how much pain they were in. 

 

Her eyes started to peel apart the girl in front of her. She peeled back her skin and saw what was lying underneath. A ribcage that curled around a wounded heart, and a spine. It was like she was holding an x-ray right in front of her chest, it was so obvious.    
  
Bones. Bones that looked like the bars on a prison cell. A much larger ribcage curled around her, as if the bones wanted to caress her soft face. She closed her eyes completely at ease amongst the bones. 

  
There were white flowers and peaches, signs of new life, of springtime, that sprouted in between the large looming ribs. Emukae scraped delicate nails along her skin as she pulled it apart. Those nails were pitch black. The bones underneath her were black too. The same way bones looked when they had rotted away a long time ago, and yet still she was still living even with dead bones buried inside of her body. 

 

Peach blossoms.    
Peaches.    
Bones.    
Cutting her open, that was what was inside of her.    
Torn up love that’ll turn to dust.    
A person with feelings too frail to touch.   
So she felt nothing.   
All of this sickening hurting.    
Medaka sliced her open.     
And saw all the shame inside.    
She kept staring uncomprehending, at her girl dissection.    
A girl.

She smiled when she was in pain.    
She was alive and dead.   
She contradicted herself.   
Happily.    
She danced in the garden.   
Even after the flowers had long rotted away.    
  
“W-wait, I don’t want to be friends with her,” Mikan suddenly said hiding behind Emukae.    
  
Emukae turned around and reached for her face, but Mikan easily dodged her hand like she was used to it by now.    
  
“She’s scary you know. She’s just like  _ her…  _ If I get close to her I’ll be pulled into her orbit. I’ll probably think I’m happy that way, that someone unworthy like me being pulled into her orbit is a blessing. She’s just like gravity.”   
  
Medaka narrowed her eyes. “I’m not like gravity, I’m not nearly fat enough or dense enough to make a gravitational field.”   
  
“Are you sure about that?” Nanami asked.    
  
“You know you say some mean things sometimes, Nanami.”    
  
“Finally, the genius girl realizes. I was worried that I was not getting through to you what a terribly sick girl I am.”    
  


Emukae turned her head back to Mikan. “That’s a dangerous amount of self awareness coming from you.”   
  
Mikan squeaked back at her. “H-hey, I’m exactly aware of what a terrible woman I am. I always know, th-that I’m just needy and annoying so please-” 

 

Emukae just ignored her. Mikan got the feeling that Emukae was only so good at talking to her because she did not care what other people thought at all. “Is something wrong Kurokami-san? You’ve got a funny look in your eye, like you’re seeing things that aren’t there.”    
  
Medaka looked back at the pile of monitors in the electronics shop. Zenkichi suddenly turned his head to face the camera, and she felt that he was looking directly at her. “N-no, I am fine, I am the most fine, I am the finest. I am Kurokami Medaka.”    
  
“Who else would you be?” Nanami asked.    
  
_ Enoshima Junko.  _   
  
“It must be the killing game. You don’t remember every round do you? That’s not healthy.” Emukae was a good enough liar that she actually looked concerned. “I mean I know you’re gifted with a lot of talents, but that doesn’t make you any less human than anybody else. You should take care of yourself more, you have problems just like everyone else.”    
  
The words themselves were sympathetic but, Emukae the way Emukae said them.   
It was like she was laughing at her with her words. 

 

🦔

 

Matsuda Yasuke took another drag on a cigarette. He made Kamukura break into a gas station just to steal him a pack. He did not like smoking, so much as the feeling of burning. He liked slowly suffocating, and the idea of his lungs dirty with tar and ash.    
  
He would decorate the branches of his bronchi like they were tree branches in winter time covered in snow. He especially liked sucking on the other end, watching the flame slowly eat the cigarette away, inhaling it all until there was nothing left.    
  
He liked the taste of his saliva mixed with tobacco.    
It was a sloppy kiss with death.    
It was the closest substitute to kissing Enoshima Junko she could find.    
It was common for doctors and nurses to smoke, they were more aware of death than anybody else, besides murderers, but Yasuke was both. Lucky him.    
  
Just like Enoshima Junko, something that was slowly killing him was the only thing he could live on for. He loved her, but he hated her you know? It wasn’t just because she did terrible things. It was because he knew her. He knew her like she was one of his own internal organs, like his own heart.    
  
He thought knowing anybody that well was wrong. There was such a thing as being too close. Any two people who knew each other that well would come to hate each other. Childhood friends were not as romantic as everyone believed. At the same time he did not want to be apart from her either. He was always too close, and too far away. 

  
“That was a waste of my many talents you know,” Kamukura bristled, annoyed.    
  
“You yourself are a waste of your many talents.”    
  
“I know that’s true but… you don’t have to say it.”     
  
“If I don’t say it then who will?” He took another breath, blowing smoke in Kamukura’s face just to be obnoxious, or maybe he was trying to be noxious, get Kamukura to recognize that he was only poison.    
  
“That’s not healthy you know.”   
  
“Getting lectured by a kid, I’m such a failure.”   
  
“I am the same age as you are. You’re really condescending you know that.”    
  
“As the Ultimate Hope, you condescend people just by existing,” Yasuke answered smoothly. There was probably nothing anybody could say to him that would throw him off, after all Yasuke told himself far worse things. “Besides, you're only one years old. Well, I guess you’re eight now because of that simulation.” 

 

“Fine, then let me try.”   
  
“You’re so influenced by peer pressure. Did you sign up for the Kamukura project because you thought all the cool kids were doing it?”   
  
“That was only partially the reason.” Kamukura said as he lost patience and in an instant he swiped the cigarette from Yasuke’s mouth. 

 

“W-wait, don’t smoke the same one.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“N-no reason. Like I give a shit, about anything ever.”    
  
Yasuke’s face started to turn a strange shade of red. Kamukura told him it was unhealthy to smoke. Matsuda watched as Kamukura pulled his pale lips tight, his own lips twitched in anticipation. There was somethnig inside of him tightening, as if somebody had taken the large arteries around his heart and turned them into a knot, and his heart pumped harder and harder in order to get blood through. 

 

His heart was suddenly caught in his throat and he was choking on it. Why were all of his internal organs rearranging themselves like this? He was tied up in so many knots, and none of them were coming loose any time soon.    
  
Kamukura brought the cigarette to his lips. He kissed the other end and sucked it dry. He breathed the same smoke Yasuke breathed. He tasted the same poison. He let it fill him. The end of that cigarette must have been so warm right now.    
  
Then, suddenly he choked on all those feelings.   
He spit them up.   
No, he was choking on the smoke. Kamukura had no idea how to smoke a cigarette. 

  
“You really are immature huh, you can’t even smoke properly.”    
  
“I’m n-not the one who’s still hung up on his childhood friend. You’re the one who r-refuses to grow up.”

  
  
“Those speeches don’t really work if you’re coughing the entire time through them. It totally ruins your stoic image.”    
  
“It’s not an image. You make it sound like I’m trying to impress people.”    
  
“Isn’t that what you’re always doing all the time?”    
  
“I-I’ll learn how to smoke in a few minutes let me just observe a little more.”    
  
Yasuke snorted again. “It’s funny how someone who can learn things as effortlessly as you do, still tries way too hard.” 

 

“You and Komaeda are just a couple of comedians, huh? Can’t ever have my way with either of you, or anything else.”    
  
A Hinata-like line came out of his mouth, but Matsuda was sure it was not because of him. Hinata just thought of Komaeda for a moment there. Things fell silent between the two of them as they walked along.    
  
They passed abandoned shop windows and their reflections appeared in the glass next to them. Kamukura’s reflection was trailing behind his. There was a distance between the two of them.  Sometimes Yasuke wondered if Hinata sometimes failed to recognize his own face. 

 

“You shouldn’t keep punishing yourself like that.”    
  
“Not everything is a metaphor. God you’re just like Junko, do you know how many times I had to hear her say annoying pretentious shit like  _ life is a metaphor Yasuke-kun.  _  Sometimes it’s just a cigarette.”    
  
“Sometimes it’s also a dick,” Hinata said back crudely.    
  
Yasuke swallowed his own spit, tainted with the taste of wet ash, and did not have any further comment.    
  
“I think if it was the other way around I would have done whatever the Kamukura project told me to do, even if it meant operating on you again and again. I’d probably be happy about it because it meant that Hope’s Peak needed me.”   
  
“Don’t pull that crap with me. I’m not an idiot like you for one,” Yasuke crumpled up the cigarette and threw it away. He guessed he should add littering to the crimes against humanity he committed. “I don’t want to be anything other than the Ultimate Neurologist. That’s the only reason Junko found me, it’s because she had a use for me.”    
  
“I’m sure that’s not it.”    
  
“What does an idiot like you know?”    
  
“Well, to me luck is the most boring talent of them all, but… Komaeda’s so interesting don’t you think? I’ve analyzed it again and again, but maybe it’s just… I like him you know?”    
  
“Your love poetry sucks. The ultimate poet would be ashamed.”    
  
“I was speaking from the heart.”   
  
“You don’t have a heart. I surgically removed it.” Yasuke suddenly turned around and glared at Kamukura. “Look it’s obvious I regret what I did but you know what else? I’m sure I would make the same choice all over again. Why can’t you get that through your thick skull?”    
  
“You must be a really talented surgeon if you managed to cut a hole in my thick skull.” 

 

He remembered Kamukura’s body, naked, cold and shivering underneath his kinfe. It was less like operating on a living individual and more like performing an autopsy. Matsuda felt like he was dissecting a corpse. 

  
He was able to run his hands along his torso and feel the smooth grooves of his muscles underneath his skin. He imagined cutting a slit from the bottom of his well defined collarbone, all the way down his perfect flat stomach. 

 

He was just a boy on an operating table, and yet there was something oddly naked about him. His body looked like it had never been touched before. Hinata Hajime was someone who never really lived his life, he was closed off from everyone, a shy little flower that folded its petals. Yasuke was immediately overcome with the instinct to tear it up. 

 

He wanted to be inside of him. He would go deeper inside of him than anybody else ever had, they would be closer than two people could ever be. He could touch Hinata in a way nobody else could. 

 

Hinata’s lips were so faded they turned a light shade of blue. To press his lips against those. To kiss dead lips. To kiss death. To feel that, cold, against him, and yet somehow warm at the same time. 

 

Kamukura was so beautiful. Yasuke mused on what kind of beautiful flowers he had growing inside of him. The hospital was cold and sterile, but they could be warm. If they cleaned up after themselves when it was over it would be fine. 

 

  
Yasuke reached up to wipe the blood from his face, but he ended up smearing it all over his lips instead, like the sloppy lipstick that Junko used to leave all over him. She used to draw on the side of his face with a lipstuck tube, what an annoying girl. 

 

_ Yeah, normal people don’t think of disecting other people like this. _ _   
_ _ This is why nobody loves you, Yasuke.  _   
  
He admonished himself in his own head. Kamukura watching him tried to bring him back. “ I’m okay with you always choosing to operate on me. I mean doesn’t that mean that no matter what I’d always get to meet you?” 

 

“Don’t smile at me. You smile just like that idiot, Hinata-kun.”    
  
Kamukura did not even realize he was smiling. He reached to feel his lips, but he was wearing a pretty neutral expression. Yasuke had probably just read him as smiling. “You knew me before I even had the operation?”    
  
“...You weren’t my first choice, anyway. If I really had a choice I would have given the surgery to Komaeda, but nobody thought he would survive. I thought it might give him a chance to live, but nobody listened to the brat.”   
  
“Y-you didn’t want me?”   
  
“You’ll take any excuse to get insecure, won't you?” 

 

The two of them continued along chatting like they were old firends. Hinata’s memories of the past were faded, but he remembered that Yasuke was popular among the girls in the reserve course. He thought he finally understood why. 

 

“If only we had met back then. Do you think we could have become friends?”   
  
“No, I hate dumbasses like you.”    
  
Despite Yasuke saying that, the two of them talked to each other so easily. He was the monster because Yasuke was Frankenstein, and Yasuke was only Frankenstein because he was the monster. 

  
He would not be Kamukura without him.    
He wished Yasuke was not so tsun.    
He wished he would just realize already.    
  
Before Kamukura could experience ‘an emotion’ he spotted something parachuting down from the sky. It was the medicine just as the bangle had told them. 

 

He jumped high into the air, moving like a shadow, like air resistance and gravity did not apply to someone like him. He snatched it out of the sky. He fell down, but landed with perfection.   
  
In front of a girl with dark hair and red eyes.    
The same eyes as Kamukura, but brighter somehow staring back at him.    
  
“W-wait, Nanami needs that medicine!”   
  
“Gundham needs the medicine,” Kamukura said, “It makes no sense to choose a total stranger over one of our schoolmates. How is someone as smart as you so illogical?” 

 

“Munakata-sensei needs that medicine! Buuu-uuut, nobody really cares about him because he’s a huge fat jerk,” Emukae watched the scene with her chin in her hands, looking distineterested. 

 

“Oh great she’s here. Why can’t they ever just put normal people in a killing game, why’s it always gotta be a bunch of traumatized weirdoes and fucking psychoes,” Matsuda complained out loud. 

 

Medaka aimed a punch at his gut.    
Kamukura dodged the attack. It was like watching a truck from twenty miles away coming towards him, when he saw that far into the future it was easy to dodge.    
  
It was like he knew what punch she was going to throw before she threw it. As futile as fighting your own mirror image. After all, they were both born to be the hope of mankind. Kamukura threw back the medicine to Yasuke and countered. 

 

She threw her body around in a spin kick, and Kamukura brought his knee up and his elbow down at the same time, and smashed her ankle between it. She did not even try to dodge, or stop her attack, like she did not even feel pain. 

 

Her punches were so heavy. She had no speed so she was throwing all of her strength behind it. He was not naturally strong like her, his body was just remodeled, Yasuke reached inside of him and touched all of his bones tickling them. They might break if he got hit like that, but he was faster than her. 

  
His dark hair followed behind him with every slick movement. He stepped more silently than a shadow as it made its way across the ground. They both punched forward with opposite arms, and their fists crashed into opposite sides of each other’s face at the same time, and yet both of them shrugged off the blow.    
  
Medaka threw a melee of punches, but Kamukura easily ducked and weaved his way in between them. It was like she was leaving holes purposefully for him to dodge. She was such a thoughtful girl.    
  
At the same time it was frustrating, it felt like she was holding back. She took pity on him because she knew, even after having his whole body remodeled he could not be like her. He would never be better than a natural born genius. She was genuine in a way he could never be. 

 

If she went to Hope’s Peak from the start, they probably would have abandoned the Kamukura project in favor of her. 

 

He was the most talented person, he never once wished for that. He thought he would be fine with just one talent, just one special thing about him, he wanted to have something to show off for Chiaki. He wanted to be the special person that Komaeda once treated him as.    
  
Yet, it was never enough. Being the second most talented person in the world was not enough for him.    
  
He hit her hard enough to slam her against the wall, and yet he felt no victory. She probably took that hit on purpose. She was just trying to show off that none of his punches would ever reach her, so she did not even need to bother dodging.    
  
“You’re so dull, Kurokami.” Kamukura assessed in a cold voice. “I don’t mean you’re boring, it’s more like your senses are dulled. I’ve never met someone as completely dull to darkness as you. It’s not like you accept people’s dark sides the same way Kumagawa does, you just don’t see it at all.” 

  
He felt like she was looking at her, but he was not.

What would he have to do to make her notice.   
What would he have to do to be reflected back in her eyes.    
  
“You’re just so above everything and everyone you just assume no one can hurt you. That’s just hubris. You don’t care about betrayal because you assume you’re always going to win in the end. You don’t care if people have bad intentions, because you think you can win them over with good intentions. Are you the main character? Do I just exist to be a bit part in this story about you?” 

 

Kamukura’s mismatched eyes turned away like he could not stand to look at her. He grit his teeth so hard, and pulled his face into his most frustrated expression. The trademark look of Hinata exasperation. It was like someone else was using his face to express those feelings. “You’re entire family might be dead? Why aren’t you sad? It’s like… you’re not even thinking about it. You haven’t considered the possibility that Nanami could be the game master this week, and she assigned the mission to kill us. It’s such a predictable twist…” 

He screamed in her face.   
He did not know he was capable of screaming. “Yet still, how do you feel so much? How are you always feel things? You feel things for total strangers I can’t even feel for the people closest to me? Why you? Why was it you? You should be bored too!” 

Medaka suddenly stood up.    
He made her angry.   
Kamukura smirked. He felt satisfied with that. His feelings could reach that girl after all.   
She was not just some untouchable girl.    
Come have a taste of these sickening feelings of mine, you deserve it. 

He tried to dodge her blow, but Medaka changed direction of her punch half way through. It was completely illogical, the same kind of fighting pattern that Kumagawa would use. The fist twisted in the center of his stomach. 

Kamukura fell to his knees.   
Hinata felt so much pain he wanted to vomit.   
It was not just pain, but also disgust for himself.  
His own weakness.   
Kamukura remembered.   
Hinata remembered.    
He was once hit hard like this, he crumbled, a boring life with feelings too frail to touch.    
That was the life he lived up until that point.    
That was the life he was still living.   
He looked at Medaka standing over him.   
He saw Juzo still standing over him.    
His eyes.   
Her eyes.   
They looked down on him. 

_ Go back into fitting in your slot. Maybe if you beg, we’ll throw you a bone.  _   
  
Nothing had changed since back then.    
Hinata Hajime, Kamukura Izuru, Hinata Izuru, he was always changing, and still the same. 

Not one thing changed.   
It was so…  _ frustrating.  _   
This struggle, that only talentless people felt.   
  
  



	21. Everyone Needs You / No One Needs You

Hinata Hajime, age 17.  
Born January 1st, Capricorn, blood type A.  
Height 179cm weight 67 kg chest size: 91 cm  
Right-handed.  
Visual acuity: 2.0 in both eyes  
Both parents healthy. Household normal. Latch-key kid.  
Unable to afford Hope’s Peak tuition without assistance.  
Attends: Hope’s Peak Academy Reserve course, First year.  
Teacher comments: Never causes much trouble in class. Often stops paying attention during lecture to stare out the window towards the hope’s peak campus. Could probably get higher than average grades if he tried harder.  
Strongest subject: None in particular.  
Weakest subect: None in particular  
First term of year, attended the baseball club, but within one month retired membership of own accord. When he heard rumors Kuwata Leon was likely to be scouted next year he lost interest.  
No bicycle owned.  
No mobile phone owned. No PC owned.  
Spends his free time working out alone in his room. Does not read much.  
No close friends.  
No girlfriend.  
Cuts his own hair. Apparently the reason it’s spiked up like that is he tried to copy the way a character in a popular manga at the time looked.  
Hobby: nothing in particular.  
Does not like to make eye contact with people.  
Does not like to go places with many people.  
Seems sensitive to the noise.  
Does not accept others invitations to hang out after school.  
Personality is withdrawn, sullen, and yet he has a bad temper.  
Rarely looks at other people’s faces while speaking.  
Uncomfortable with people’s gaze and does not like being looked at.  
Hates both looking and being looked at.  
For the most part in class he remains silent.  
Mouth sealed.  
Speechless, wordless.  
Favorite food: Kusamochi.  
Least favorite food: Sakuramochi.  
Favorite manga: whatever is popular this season.  
Favorite novels: young adult fiction.  
Favorite sport: baseball (spectating)  
Favorite games: retro  
Favorite place: Hope’s Peak. 

Dreams for the Future: Hope’s Peak

Told his teacher it was pointless for him to make friends in the reserve course. 

Matsuda crumpled up the report given to him by the Ultimate Spy. There was so much unnecessary and useless information compiled that he regretted even asking him to tail the subject for the Kamukura project. He wondered what the steering committee was thinking, were they trying to pick the most forgettable person on the planet earth in case something with the surgery went wrong?  
  
“Why do I have to meet him in person? How about I take a nap instead and you wake me up when you need me to cut his brains out?” 

  
“You’re one of the chosen of Hope’s Peak.” Kirigiri Jin placed a hand on his shoulder. Yasuke wished he could grow spines to stop people from touching him. “Everyone needs you.”  
  
Yasuke was sure someone like Komaeda fell for that trick. Yasuke could care less if he was useful to the faceless old men steering Hope’s Peak. There was only one person he wanted to be useful too. 

 _“You’re way too easy to push around, Yasuke-kun.”_ _  
_ _“Then stop pushing me around. If you’re aware of your own flaws but don’t correct them then you’re just a failure of a human being. ”_ _  
_ _“Yasuke-kun don’t flirt with me in public like this by looking at me like I’m garbage.”_ _  
_ _“I’m not looking at you!”_ _  
_ _“But my boobs are right here! Why aren’t you looking at them?”_ _  
_ _“Hmph.”_ _  
_ _“You let yourself get used by so many people! So easily! I’m jealous!  I wish you were doing this for me, but it's all about you, isn't it?"  
"If you hate me now then just leave me alone already. You're giving me a headache."   
".... I can’t hate you for it, because that’s the Yasuke-kun I love.”   
_

He felt her cold touch, her thumb and fingers lacing elegantly between his collarbone and neck. The way her giggles in his ear trickled down like raindrops. Reddish pink hair tickling the sides of his face. Her awful habit of pretending to lean in, only to bite him on the cheek instead. The way she laughed so hard she snorted when he glared at her in response. How she talked, getting so close like he was the only one in the world she ever wanted to talk to. He remembered every sensation, at all times.  
  
Even when Kirigiri Jin tried to lead him one way, he felt her nails scraping across his skin to lovingly caress him in a touch that would leave marks and blood. 

The other scientists tried to reassure him that Hinata Hajime chose this for himself.  
Yasuke was chosen.  
Hinata Hajime chose.  
What does that even mean?  
His mother died and his father walked out, and he had no place to live unless he made himself useful somehow. If that was what Kirigiri called being chosen by god, then that sure was a shitty god. 

It could have been anybody, but it was Hajime Hinata. Perhaps it was always going to be Hajime Hinata. They talked about _live on a track._ You go through middle school, high school, college, enter society, support yourself with a salary so you can bag a lover, and then die. That’s the track of life. Except, to Hinata Hajime following that track would be the worst thing imaginable. 

  
It’s not like all tracks are set by society. If Hajime Hinata picked up a bat in first grade and decided he wanted to be a baseball player, he would have been setting a different track from himself. Except, he was not on the rails at all.  
  
If he was on a track at one point,  it was one that would have him feeling inferior and useless his whole life until it led him right to the front of Hope’s Peak to take advantage of that inferiority of his and his desire to be anything but useless.  
  
In other words Hinata Hajime looked like a dropout.  
He went off the rails.

Chestnut hair, a wide chest, he wore a black jacket reserve course uniform that he looked uncomfortable in. He probably was ashamed of being a reserve course student, but Yasuke got the feeling even if he was in a Hope’s Peak Uniform he would be just as uncomfortable. He was the type who looked uncomfortable in their own skin, slouched shoulders, hunched back, a feeling of slowly sinking, the way he sat reminded him of Komaeda. 

 

“Sorry, I can’t do anything to fix that stupid hair of yours," Yasuke said.   
  
“H-how is this part of the evaluation?” Hinata squeaked. He actually squeaked. Yasuke wanted to laugh.   
  
“Your bangs are uneven. Do you cut it yourself? I thought they didn’t let little kids use scissors. Your parents are so irresponsible.” _For this, and other reasons._  
  
“Like you should be talking to me. Your hair looks like you just rolled out of bed.”  
  
“I did. You wasted my nap time. Thanks for that by the way. Do you always cause problems and waste the time of others just for existing?” Yasuke was pretty sure if he yawned right now to indicate how bored he was, this kid was going to break out crying. 

“You’re a piece of shit you know that?” 

“I’m aware, yes. This isn’t about me. This is to evaluate what a shitty test subject you’re going to make for the Kamukura project, and your shitty hair.”  
  
“Why do you keep talking about my hair?”  
  
“Because you’re sensitive about it,” Matsuda smirked. _That, and everything else it seems.  
_  
“Why are you suddenly being so harsh on me? They said I was going to talk to a doctor…”  
  
“I am a doctor.”  
  
“What, how are you a doctor when you’re only seventeen?”  
  
“I didn’t waste so much of my life asking stupid questions like you did, and used that time to study instead,” Yasuke tsked lightly as he wrote something down on a clipboard. He was pretending to take notes but really he just wrote _STUPID_ in big letters just because he felt like being mean. “You’re not fit for this experiment. This requires multiple procedures, and you seem like the type who gives up when life gives him so much as a papercut.”  
  
In the future Yasuke would look back on this scene and wonder, if he tried a little bit harder to be unpleasant or if he told Hinata straight what would happen to him in the Kamukura project would he have run away like Yasuke wanted? No, Hinata was not going to listen because he was on that rail.  
  
He should have done something more.  
He should have screamed in his face.  
He should have hit him.   
He should have done... anything... just one thing.   
  
“That’s easy for you to say. This school… somebody wants you around. This is the only way for me to stay at the school I love.”  
  
“Do you really love it so much? You’ve looked miserable and uncomfortable the entire time you were here," Yasuke did not believe this naive boy act for one second, but he also did not find Hinata interesting enough to try to pick apart. He could dissect him later when he was sawing his skull open.    
  
“Well you look like a bitch.”  
  
“No, that’s just my face," Yasuke said, scowling.   
  
“You have resting bitch face?”  
  
“I have active bitch face, thank you,” Yasuke said sounding a little too proud.  
  
Hinata grinded his teeth together but said nothing more. Yasuke could not believe the test subject that was going to become the world’s hope was actually pouting. From what he could tell they were opposites, Hinata cared too much about being liked, and Yasuke did not care at all.  
  
That was why, Hinata swallowed his frustration and tried to be friendly again. “Hey, what kind of talent are you going to give me anyway?”   
  
“That’s unimportant,” Yasuke said without looking up.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You’re unimportant.”  
  
“Wait-” Hinata, incredulous.   
  
“How about I make you the Super High School Level Unimportant Guy?” Yasuke smiled for the first time in their conversation.   
  
“Why would I go through all of this just for a useless talent like that!” Hinata found his smile worse than his scowl.   
  
“Well, they say you develop a talent based on your personality.”  
  
“Oh, is that why the Super High School Level Neurologist is such a smartass?”  
  
“The brain is located in the head, not the ass. Are you sure you want to go to Hope’s Peak High School? I heard they have a Li’l Ultimate program for kindergarteners.” 

“Now I’m definitely going to get the surgery just to spite you," Hinata said, his voice rising an entire octave with anger. Yasuke wondered why he had not tried his luck with choir to see if he had any talent as a soprano.   
  
“Wow, lay down on a table while I cut you open with a knife. That’ll really show me.”  
  
“Tengan-san said I was really brave for doing this.”  
  
He hated the way that boy’s dim green eyes looked at him. They were like Komaeda’s, but less clouded. They were eyes that desired something. Something from him. Needy eyes. Gross. “What? I’m not your mom. Do you really want me to pat you on the head and praise you?”  
  
“It beats being yelled at.” Hinata grabbed at his unevenly cut hair, and pulled at it making it even more of a mess. “Why do you have to be so difficult about everything?” A sentence shouted at Komaeda a lot, except Yasuke was doing it on purpose. “Can’t we just be friends?”  
  
Hinata’s expression was open and optimistic, at least he looked that way. The same way Komaeda wanted to look, but cotton boy was clueless, and Yasuke’s eyes were too sharp anyway. Apparently the boy who won the lucky student seat for next year was a normal guy with no outstanding traits except how easy he was to get along with. The kind of person who honestly meant it when he said _I just want everyone to get along._ Hinata was like that too, but not genuine about it at all. 

“I don’t want to be friends with a dumbass.”  
  
“I don’t care then! We’ll be stuck together from now on whether you want to be or not.”  
  
“If my only future is being stuck with you, I might be tempted to commit some medical malpractice just to get rid of you.” _I’m already committing unethical science, might as well._ Yasuke thought, as his lips twisted into a sneer. 

Hinata Hajime. If they met in another lifetime, Yasuke was sure he would never be friends with such a spineless person, always puffing out his chest when other people were watching. He was pretty sure he had the worst childhood friend in the whole world, and yet he would still pick her over this guy. 

Yet, the two of them were connected. Ever since he cut into that tanned skin with a scalpel, and saw rivulets of blood appear from the seams he had cut open, he had been tied to Hinata. He was tied up in a red string whose fibers were veins pulled from Hinata’s body. Such a grotesque image was the only thing that could describe any connection between the two of them.  
  
Yet, he was reluctant.  
He did not want to cut.  
He could not.  
  
One night his regrets pushed him to the point that he stood by Hinata’s bedside and held a scalpel to his throat. One cut is all it would take. Then he would no longer have to hear Hinata begging for the pain to stop. He would make some excuse to Junko. He would take her and run away with her like he had always wanted. He could convince her somehow that Hope’s Peak was too boring for the both of them.  
  
As he hovered over that bed like a reaper in white, he saw Hinata’s eyes slowly peel open.  
  
“It’s alright…”  
  
No.  
  
“It’ll be alright, Yasuke…”  
  
Don’t say that. Yasuke wanted to scream that. He wanted to break down crying. All he did was drop the scalpel and fall to his knees. He heard the sound of it skittering across the floor. Hinata rolled over in bed and closed his eyes again, or maybe he was already Kamukura by that point.  
  
He could not cut this string.  
  
🦔

 

Yasuke sat next to Kamukura’s bedside, pretending to be far more interested in the manga he was reading then the sleeping prince next to him. He decided already the moment he woke up, he was going to complain about how heavy Kamukura was, and how difficult he was to drag back here.   
  
His lab coat was spread over Kamukura like a blanket. The light was dim, because apparently that was the only setting for abandoned hospital room lights. The light from the monitors piled up in the corner added a little more light. Yasuke was sure Kamukura’s obsession with watching that game at every waking moment had reached the point where there was now television in every room.   
  
If Junko was here she would say that a pile of televisions stacked up like they were thrown away in a junkyard was symbolic for the shallow ideas that spread easily across mass media these days. God he hated her.

When Kamukura’s uneven eyes finally did open, Yasuke said nothing.  
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out like the words and breath had both been stolen from him. When Kamukura tried to awkwardly thank him for carrying him back to the hospital, Yasuke just looked away. He hid his face, because he did not want the other boy, or anybody else to know what expression his mouth made in that moment.  
  
The two of them sat silently next to each other, Kamukura still in the bed for the next few minutes like a couple of people with great communication skills. That was fine. Great even. Yasuke wanted to bash his head against the wall every time he heard himself speak, so he actually preferred when he stayed silent.  
  
Then a scene played across the piled up televisions that made it impossible for either of them to stay silent.  
  
Komaeda fell at Junko’s feet.  
He begged her to love him.  
He begged her to use him.  
He said he could be Kumagawa’s substitute.  
Junko told him no.

Kumagawa could not be replaced.  
Violence.  
Romance.  
Pink.  
Strangulation.  
Break.  
His hands wrapped around her.  
His knuckles bone white.  
Fading colors. Komaeda so fragile.  
A series of images one after another.  
On the other side of the screen.  
Flashing by on the boob tube. 

All they could do was watch as Komaeda and Junko tried to kill each other. He saw Kamukura slipping, he got the look in his eye like he was falling backwards, slipping, slipping, away from himself.  
  
There was a different but familiar look in those eyes. One day, the painful glances that Hinata used to give him, turned into a look of disinterest. He did not look sad at the idea of losing a friend, so much as he was bored at this outcome. His face seemed to say _what a predictable twist._ As if he was not watching living, breathing people with thoughts and feelings of their own but actors reading off of a script that he had already gotten a peak at.  
  
He wasn’t just scared of losing Komaeda.  
He was also scared of losing himself.  
  
Matsuda stood up and walked over to the outlet, pulling the power strip that was so overloaded it was probably going to cause a fire at some point.  
  
“It’s useless.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You’re useless.”  
  
“Telling me things I already know is boring conversation.”  
  
“There’s nothing you can do, so you should just stop watching.”  
  
“Komaeda could be dead. You’re not as hard to read as you seem to think you are, I know you, I know you care.”   
  
Kamukura stood up and grabbed for the plug, but Matsuda kept it out of reach like he was just an older sibling teasing him with it. “I don’t care. Komaeda has nothing to do with me.” _It has nothing to do with you either._ He didn’t say it. He was good at running his mouth, but he never really _said anything._

“It has everything to do with you. Komaeda’s only at risk because you insisted on keeping Enoshima alive. He wouldn’t be locked in that game with her if it wasn’t for you.”  
  
Yasuke’s lips quirked upwards. He was no longer scowling, but it wasn’t a smile either. It looked worse than the face he was usually wearing. “There we go. Just say it. You think you’re better than me, even though we’re both just trying to protect one person.” Yasuke opened his mouth. His tongue dripped, he looked like he was being burned by his own corrosivity. “It’s your fault. You gave him to her. You’re the one who couldn’t predict a twist so obvious as _the villain lies._ ”

Kamukura punched him in the gut. How useless. Both of them were already aware of how useless they were.  
  
If only there was someone else to hate.  
Anybody else would be fine.  
Even the person right in front of me.  
  
“I thought you were supposed to be the Ultimate Boxer. Why are you giving me a love tap like that, are you trying to flirt?” Yasuke has a thin frame, and no stamina or muscle at all, and he looks about as stable as someone who had not slept for three days and yet he still had the confidence to mouth off even after getting the wind knocked out of him. Perhaps that was his true talent.  
  
Yasuke felt himself lifted by the unbuttoned collar around his neck. He took a step back to get away. Kamukura yanked him forward to grab at the cord, but Yasuke jerked away again. 

“I really hate the way you smile in front of others, pretending you’re doing this all for them,” Yasuke taunted as he continued to back away. He kicked over the pile of televisions causing a few of them on the top to fall and break. 

  
“How come you only show such an awful in front of me? Is it because of my awful personality? Well, I don’t really care why, I’m just not interested in knowing any more about you because I already have someone-”  
  
Kamukura stepped over the line that separated them. He trespassed like a thief. He was so close, that Yasuke tried to breathe in only to feel his chest touching Kamukura’s. His breath was taken next. Then, Kamukura leaned forward close enough Yasuke’s ears turned red from being kissed by his breath like that.  
  
“You don’t really still love Junko, do you?”  
  
Yasuke was struck dumb. In this tiny, gloomy room, with no light at all from the outside, Kamukura smirked as if he could read his mind, and yet the eyes that were staring did not smile at all.  
  
“You loved her, didn’t you?”  
  
“What are you trying to say?” _Don’t touch me._ Yasuke prickled. He felt spines stabbing into his own skin. They were not even touching, and there was a layer of fabric that kept both of their bodies apart.  


“Your relationship between yourself and Junko, was exactly like that between you and your mother. Don’t act like you got fooled by Enoshima, or became her victim, you were seeking it out. Isn’t this what you were looking for? The type of person you always get involved with, Kumagawa, Komaeda, me, we’re all unfixable just like your mother was. And that’s how you keep yourself stable, or rather content.”  
  
This was too close. He could feel the quills pushing into his flesh. He hated when people got this close. Irritating. Something was irritating his neck. He felt a cold chill as it tightened around him. Gross, gross, gross. Stop looking at me.  
  
“What you wanted wasn’t someone to protect, a friend, a lover or even family. It’s just someone who would make you certain that you were really there, that you existed, when sometimes it didn’t feel like you did. When it felt like you’d been forgotten. So you don’t even need to love Enoshima anymore, you can love the idea of being in love with her. Am I wrong?” 

 _  
_ “Jeez, I wonder how you could possibly ever read me this well?” He crossed the distance between them. Yasuke first drifted slowly towards the face of the other boy, like gravity was pulling him closer, like this was inevitable between them, he leaned in -

 

And then slammed his fist into Kamukura’s face.  
It was a completely useless punch.  
Kamukura’s face did not even flinch. He just took it with a neutral expression. 

 

“It’s alright. If you need someone to give me a reason, I’ll be your reason.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You can do your best for my sake.”  
  
“Damnit.”  
  
“I’ll let you protect me. I need you.”  
  
“Stop saying that shit.”  
  
“You have such a hard time. You have to do terrible things at Hope’s Peak and complain the entire time. Everyone needed you. Enoshima needed you. Kirigiri Jin needed you. I needed you. Komaeda needed you. We all used you because you had talent. And you yourself wanted to be used by us. And you’re always suffering from that right? But… Enoshima never needed anything for you. From the moment you met her, you were just a corpse she wanted to cry over. Maybe no one ever needed anything from you, somebody else could have become the Ultimate Neurologist for the Kamukura Project.” _  
  
_

“...” 

  
“No one needs you. Doesn’t that mean you’re just as useless as I am?”

 

Yasuke found it horribly irritating.  
And felt just a bit grateful.  
This was the face Kamukura chose to show in front of him, like a dirty secret between them.  
  
“You’re not done bullying girls who are younger than you, so you have to take it out on me too? You want so badly to be like Naegi Makoto don’t you? You must hate that he’s everything you’re not. You want to be everybody’s friend, but I think you’re just like me,  you only have one friend.” 

  
You have everything that I lack.  
You are everything that I long to become.  
The moment we met, I already knew.  
Behind your words, your feelings are always hidden, swallowed down.

“The only person you can ever be your genuine self around is Komaeda, and that’s why you hate him so much.” 

  
Kamukura pushed him over. He fell back onto the bed. Yasuke remembered a time in the past where he sat in the biology lab with a single bed and chatted uselessly with an amnesiac girl. It was so nostalgic he wanted to vomit.  
  
They were just thrashing against each other. 

A button got torn of of Kamukura’s shirt.  
Kamukura pulled at his tie.  
He kneed the other man in the groin.  
Kamukura put his hand on his ribs as if to caress them.  
Then he felt a sharp pain up his side.  
Their breathing got heavier.  
He saw Kamukura’s body over his. He was like a black, heavy stain on the sky.  
Yasuke considered how easy it was that the bed could be stained with their regrets.  
Kamukura hit him hard in the face, and Yasuke tasted blood that was better than any kiss.  
Yasuke clawed at him.  
But he looked like he was tearing away at his shirt.  
Their knees knocked against each other.  
His elbow hit his rib. His hand grabbed onto his hair hard and pulled.  
He noticed Kamukura’s always still and silent face was just on the point of breaking.  
Yasuke wanted to push it a little farther.  
Break it a little more.  
He cupped Kamukura’s cheek and raised his head, lining up his face with the other boy’s.  
Then he headbutted as hard as he could.  
Kamukura’s body was covered in surgical scars and Yasuke wanted to add more.  
His heart raced, and he convinced himself it was just adrenaline.  
The two of them clashed like this unabated, pushing each other away, scratching at each other, pulling the other close to hit them.  
They were not thinking.  
  
No thinking about tomorrow.  
No thinking about this game.  
No thinking about themselves.  
No thinking about their only friend.  
  
They didn’t want to think about anything more, because they both knew. It’s something that doesn’t need to be expressed in words. The melody of their painted grunts, paired with the rhythm when they collided, stifled emotions, woven by their fingertips as they tried to ear each other apart. 

  
They were both trying to live the same way.  
_When you realize your own future’s gone to shit all you have left_ _  
_ _Is to live for someone else._  
  
Kamukura rolled off of Matsuda. He stopped trying to break his fists against his face. Even in this moment he was genuinely worried he might kill him. _Sucker._ Matsuda thought. They lapsed back into silence again, and for a moment all that filled the room was the steady rise and fall of their chests as they laid next to each other on the bed. They were both breathless, and trying desperately to hold onto something.  
  
“This is pointless. If you want to be alone so badly, you’re always going to be alone no matter what I do,” Kamukura said, as he slowly stood up and left the room.

  
Yasuke watched him leave. "You're such a halfass, always giving up so easy," he murmured.  
  
Yasuke rolled over to where Kamukura had been lying a moment ago, and besides a slight indentation in the bed there was nothing left of him, no smell, no trace of his warmth. He dug inside of his pocket and pulled out his carton, scraping out one of the cigarettes.  
  
“I’m finally alone.”  
  
Yasuke said as he struggled to light the cigarette, his hands shaking too much, and his vision blurred.  
  
“If only I was alone from the start. If only Junko never found me, I would not have had to put up with so many annoying people.”

He plugged the television back in and leaned his back against it. He watched Junko talk to a wall.  
  
“Stop talking to yourself you weirdo.” 

 

“...”  
  
“Point taken.”  
  
“...”  
  
“If I never met you, then I’d be… then I’d be happy…” 

 _  
_ _If that’s happiness then…_ _  
_ _Why does it feel so wrong?_

 "Connecting is so damn hard..." 

🦔

Yasuke heard Junko’s voice from the television he had his back against.  
  
_“I can talk to anyone else whenever I want. I can’t talk to you. You’re the only person that I want to talk to that I can’t.”_

He knew.  
Those words were not addressed to him.  
He was not hers anymore.  
Even so, his heart was dyed a single color by her.  
Because he heard those words in the past.  
  
He closed his eyes. He did not want to think. He did not want to remember. Nostalgia made him want to vomit. Yet, the memories came flooding back like the tears he refused to shed. They say emotions you repressed came out in another way, so even if he never cried he was always crying.  
  
What a joke.  
He wanted to laugh until he cried.  
  
He remembered a faceless man holding his case file. The light was so harsh that Matsuda needed to squint. “No relative has come forward to claim you. However, someone apparently set you up with enough money to live alone from now on as long as you continue your education.”  
  
That was the worst thing possible for him to hear. He did not want to live alone. He would have taken being chucked into the foster and thrown from family to family, as long as it meant having other people around him. 

He was already alone for so long. His mother forgot about him. The hospital staff ignored him. There was only one person in this world who knew or cared who he was. He didn’t want to stop existing. He didn’t want nobody to care about him.  
  
“You’ll be visited once a month, otherwise just live like a latch key kid. It shouldn’t be any different from how you were living before.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Since a special exception is being made for you on account of this money, you’re not allowed to bring anyone home to see your living conditions. If you want to hang out with a friend go to their house.”  
  
He only had one friend.  
Matsuda was no longer interested in making more.

His old apartment resembled Kamukura’s room, the furniture looked like the set of a play, rather than a room somebody lived in. The only thing that looked used at all were the books he studied from every night.  
  
He had been moved far away from Enoshima Junko.  
She probably forgot about him now.  
One night he heard a tapping on his window.  
He thought for a moment, _if he died, would he be able to see mother again?_ _  
_ _Did he even want to?_

Perhaps he was not the kind child that he thought he was.  
Perhaps he never really wanted to protect his mother.  
Perhaps he was selfish.  
He did not do enough for her, he demanded too much for her and that’s why she deteriorated.  
He hated her by the end.  
He told her so.  
He said how terrible it was for mothers to hit their children.  
Then she died. 

He looked out the window.  
It was another gray sky filled with rain.   
Yasuke sat up to face the would be robber, and instead a girl with red pigtails was standing on the other side pressing her cheeks against the glass while she made a stupid face at him.  
  
Yasuke had no idea how Junko was able to reach this window, until he looked down and saw she was standing on Mukuro’s shoulders, using her sister like a stepping stool. He closed the curtains on her and then rolled over in bed like he was ignoring her to go back to sleep. When he heard Junko scream on the other side, he smirked to himself. 

Junko toppled in and landed on top of him. 

“How did a stupid girl like you even get here?”  
  
“The power of love!”  
  
“The power of stalking maybe," Yasuke groaned.   
  
“You always say such mean things! If you keep going like this you’re going to grow up with a dirty mouth, Yasuke-kun.”  
  
“Stop saying weird things. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”  
  
“I ran away! Let’s elope together!” She said, her eyes bright with their usual excitement.   
  
“Please go home right now,” Yasuke said pushing her away while Junko made kissy faces at him. He knew she was just teasing him, because he was only one year older but boys did not like girls at this age.  
  
“We should make a childhood promise to marry right now. That way if we don’t grow up and get married it would be super sad, right?”  
  
“I don’t get what you’re saying…”  
  
“I mean it’s really sad when you break promises right? I said even if you hide, I’ll always be by your side. You can’t escape me. You tried to move away, so I ran away from home to find you.”  
  
“Now you’re just being creepy," Yasuke said, sounding tired.   
  
“Maybe love is supposed to be grotesque!”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean when you suddenly use big words. You should go home, that’s a pretty stupid reason to run away. Somebody probably misses you.”  
  
“Yasuke-kun. Did you miss me?”  
  
“...No," Yasuke shuddered with an emotion he did not understand.   
  
“Nobody at home misses me anyway, so I can run away all I want.”  
  
“But your family-”  
  
“My family’s not there. My family’s right here.” She wrapped her arms around him again. There was something possessive about it, like the times she had seen Junko get in a fight with the other kids at primary school about her favorite toy. 

Yasuke did not resist her this time.

“I’m a super popular girl you know and everybody likes me,” Junko started again, wrapped all the way around him in their childish embrace.  
  
“You’re a big weirdo who never shuts up and always needs attention or else she throws a tantrum and starts crying.”   
  
“I could talk to anybody I want, but you’re the only one I want to talk to. That’s why I’m going to run away to come see you every day.”  
  
“P-promises like that are dumb. I never expected you to keep your promise to me-”  
  
“It’s alright, Yasuke-kun.”  
  
“Huh?” He was confused.   
  
“It’ll be alright…”  
  
They were together. Just like they had promised. When Matsuda stopped crying, when the rain stopped, she tugged on his hands and pulled him out of the window.  
  
“I want to go see the stars with you, come on!” She bossily said so, tugging him along as always.  
  
She kept smiling at the stars. Matsuda felt like they shined, just for Junko.  
If they shined so bright it was only for her.  
Except when he turned to watch her face, he did not see the multitudes of stars in her eyes.  
All he saw was his own face reflected back.  
She was watching him the entire time.  
All of the stars in the sky and she looked at him.  
Just for a brief moment, he shined with her.  
  
Together they were-  
“Alone.” Matsuda muttered to himself in the present day.  
  
“What am I supposed to do? What could I possibly do for Junko? What do I need to do for her? What are you trying to say I should do?”  
  
『 _Don’t ask me that. That just leads to a dead end. You’ll just fall off the rails._ 』  
  
Yasuke took another drag, and then blew smoke in Kumagawa’s face.  



	22. How Does the World Look to You?

**Chapter 2: God Punishes the Elite** **  
** **Day Four Part: Two**

Time for a reminiscence.   
In an unknown village thirteen years in the past.   
Three figures stood in a dark room.   
The room itself was filled with flowers and stuffed animals but there were no windows.   
The boy about four - and the girl a little older. The boy came across as bratty while the girl pale skinned, looked more like a fragile doll than a child.   
Nanami and a boy.   
Brother and sister.   
Nanami was already shorter than her younger brother.   
Anyhow.   
The man who stood tall over both of them must have been their father, Nanami deduced so anyway. The picture was a little grainy for her, her own faulty memory made it hard to see everything with satisfying quality. Her father had no face as if it had been scrubbed off. She could only identify him by his tall frame and wide shoulders, the same the boy would eventually grow up to possess. So she assumed they were related.   
In which case, Namai wondered did she look like her mother?   
Where had her mother gone anyway?   
Well, it wasn’t a big deal. She stopped worrying about that and watched the memory progress. The man made a face as if he had swallowed something unpleasant,”The next head of the family is going to be ______.”   
He spoke as if each word was bitter.   
It appeared _______ did not comprehend what father was saying, to be sure, at such a young age, he was perhaps even too young to be called a child. Nanami thought so at least.   
The Nanami of the past was expressionless.   
A face that gave away no clues to her true identity.   
She was playing it coy to all of those looking for foreshadowing.   
Her father said a bunch of things she did not care about, about succeeding the family and whatnot, and Nanami tuned him out. And yet, that man noticed Nanami’s distant face.   
Gently-- nay.   
Apologetically he placed his mighty hand on her shoulder. “Forgive me, Nanami.”   
Considering her age at the time, it would have been normal for her to fail to grasp what her father was saying. But unlike her little brother, Nanami understood what he had said, what had been said to them.   
He was chosen -- she was not chosen.   
She was left out -- she was excluded.   
She was not family.   
Her father continued to plead with her. “My true wish was for you to lead the family - but that will not be possible.” 

Nanami remained expressionless but she was not born that way, she merely stifled her expression. She always did that when others looked her way.   
She had gotten into the bad habit of stifling herself.   
She coughed politely into her sleeve.   
And hid the stained from coughed up blood.   
She stifled her sense of self.   
“Try to understand,” stupid father said, “There’s nothing I can do. No one could ever raise a child like you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” 

In her memories her parents were always apologizing to her.   
He took the young ______ by the hand.   
They left.   
Closed the door behind them.   
Walked up the stairs to the ground floor of their family estate.   
Nanami struck a match turned on the lamp she used to light this room.   
A room with four white walls.   
A four poster bed.   
A plush mattress.   
Queen sized.   
Stuffed animals.   
Puzzles.   
Race cars.   
Toys.   
Books far above a child’s reading level.   
It looked like a child’s paradise.   
Nanami thought all these toys her parents bought her,   
Were just offerings on her grave. 

Nanami walked over to a cube puzzle, but after solving it in less than a minute she got bored of it. Instead she tried to entertain herself by pulling the puzzle apart.   
She extinguished the wick of the lamp she was given by placing her palm over the open fire, ignoring the small burn on her hand.   
The darkness, and with that came the mother's voice.   
The times she as bedridden.   
She could not bend her pink finger, as noise crashed through her mind without relief she could not even open her eyes. The days that she laid on the bed as blind as a newly born kitten.   
If was as if her entire world was trapped within the tiny frame of herself, the shallow prison of her body.   
She could do nothing but mewl for her mother, helpless kitten that she was.   
Mother’s voice. 

 _You poor thing._   
Nanami herself, whose entire body was beset with pain, failed to understand why she had not lost consciousness.   
What a relief it would have been to lose awareness.   
Or even die.   
If only.   
What an incredible relief.   
_My poor little baby._ _  
_ _If only you could die, it would be over._ _  
_ _Poor thing._

In the darkness she always hear her mother calling out for her to die.   
What was that woman? A ghost? A shinigami?   
Her memory cut off again. 

  
Nanami’s eyes peeled open and all she saw was darkness, for a few moments and then she remembered. When Medaka won against the tall man whose name she did not know or care about, she looked troubled. Nanami had reached out her hand and taken Medaka’s in hers.   
  
“He talks too much.”   
She said flatly.   
“Don’t trouble yourself over his words, it’s a bad habit for people to wax loquacious when they believe they have the upper hand.”   
  
“That’s just common sense that people run their mouths when they think they’re hot shit. Source, and example: Me Matsuda.” Yasuke said as he walked over cautiously eyeing what the other two girls planned to do.   
  
“Please understand-” Nanami began politely, “Over the last twenty years, I’ve met only a few people… I’m still confused by human behavior. There are so many things I’ve never had a chance to do.” She tilted her head and gave a much less polite response. “Also, I really don’t care for them.”   
  
Nanami smiled, a pained and artificial smile.   
Weak as she was, Yasuke could not help but thinking it was an evil smile.   
Medaka offered to help him carry Kamukura back, but Matsuda could not even look her in the eye. He began to say her name and stopped himself. He muttered under his breath what a terrible person he was and then started to drag Kamukura off alone.   
Then their bracelets must have activated which led Nanami to the present annoying moment. 

 

🦔

 

“Hm, Nanami?”  
  
“I wish you’d stop referring to me with such familiarity.”   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“It’s too close. I don’t like getting close to other people, they’re covered in icky germs. I’m sick enough as it is.” 

 

“Oh, sorry,” Medaka said, scooting a few centimeters away. That girl did not seem to have a very good sense of humor, how unfortunate. Nanami spent most of her life slowly dying, so finding humor in her situation was about all she was good for. “Did a nightmare wake you up?”

  
Nanami noticed the concern in her voice. _Gross._ “No. It was all the noises you were making.” Nanami’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What is that you’re doing with your face right now?”   
  
“This? This is crying. This is a crying face. Those were crying noises.”   
  
“How odd,” Nanami gasped, she was just pretending because she thought it was funny. Such a smart girl could not deduce when she was being messed with.   
  
“Do I need to explain to you what emotions are?” 

 

“No thank you. It sounds tedious,” Nanami waved her off.   


Medaka wiped at her eyes and went back to fixating on the television screen in front of her. The two of them did not have a base like the other players in this game so they took to sleeping in an abandoned mall, right now they were in the center of a toyshop. “I’m sad…”   
  
“Please do not confide in me, we’re not that close,” Nanami said putting a hand between the two of them, she pushed Medaka’s face away, but Medaka just ignored her as usual.   
  
“I lost my childhood friend.”   
  
“How clumsy of you. Do you remember where you put him last?”   
  
“I didn’t misplace him!”   
  
“You’ll have to find a new childhood friend then,” Nanami said coldly.   
  
“Nobody in the whole world can replace Zenkichi.”   
  
“Really, you all look the same to me,” Nanami gave a tired sigh. Being this difficult with other people was the only meager resistance she had ever found in her sickness. Nanami thought the worst part of being sick was how bored it made her, the days seemed so long but there was nothing she could do to fill them.   
  
“It’s like you and your brother.”   
  
“I suppose my brother would be hard to replace. There’s nobody in the world quite as stupid as he is, just like I don’t ever think I’ll meet a girl as weird as you.”   
  
“Exactly!”   
  
“That wasn’t a compliment.”   
  
“If I close my eyes and pretend really hard it’ll turn into a compliment,” Medaka said, closing her eyes as she spoke.   
  
“You don’t have to care so much about what I think, we just met after all.”   
  
“B-but, I want to be friends with everybody I meet.”   
  
“If you’re so easy you’ll be friends with anybody then how am I supposed to believe our friendship has much value to you? You, you’re just a slut for friendship.” 

 

“A s-slut?” Medaka reacted as if the weak little girl had somehow removed the earth from underneath her feet, and immediately fell to her knees again. “I wasn’t trying to be improper! Forgive me!” 

  
“You’re always so dramatic, overacting like you’re afraid those sitting in the back might not hear you,” Nanami lifted her foot so Medaka would not get it dirty. “It must be so tiring being you. I’m not jealous at all.” Nanami never did anything, and yet she was tired all the time, the wonders of chronic illness or so she thought. 

 

“Hmmm, so that’s Zenkichi? He’s cute! He’s totally my type! What’s my type you ask? Anybody with a beating heart. I’m willing to love anybody. You might call me a lover of humanity,” Emukae said, suddenly appearing between them.  
  
Medaka jumped back, and Nanami did not.   
  
Nanami, “It’s ummm… what’s her name?”   
  
Emukae picked up her long skirt and curtsied. “Emukae Mukae, nice to meet ya!”   
  
“I’ll forget that soon, but same,” Nanami said returning the gesture.   
  
“How come you’re friendly with her but not me?” Medaka asked, huffing with jealousy.   
  
“I get along better with those who do not care what other people think about them. Who would want to concern themselves about the feelings of an ant like me anyway?” 

  
“I do!” Medaka volunteered.   


  
“No, thank you,” Nanami turned her down “What’s that strange thing you’re doing with your mouth?”   
  
“Smiling.” Emukae answered. 

  
“Weird,” Nanami lowered her eyes to her feet. See the joke was nobody saw her as a human being in the first place, just a walking tragedy, so it was funny when she acted inhuman. She was laughing at least, “Looks painful.”   
  
“You don’t know what smiling is?” Medaka fell for it again.   
  
“No, I’ve never once smiled in my life. Please cry a little more about my oh so tragic life,” Nanami said, before getting bored of that little game too, just like the games she used to play with when she was younger, no matter how many were brought in front of her she never stopped being bored of that tiny room.   


“W-wait, why are you talking about my Zenkichi?” Medaka said, her head whipping back to glare at Emukae. “Give him back to me.”   
  
Emukae could feel Medaka’s eyes boring into her, and she thought it was fun. She hoped Medaka would look through the hole in her head, and see nothing but her brains rotting away in a soup and get disgusted. “Give him back? What an odd thing to say. Hitoyoshi-kun doesn’t belong to anyone.”   
  
“Give him back.”   
  
“He’s his own man, you egotist.”

  
“She’s not the one who took him away, she’s just taunting you,” Nanami made a face as she grabbed Medaka by the sleeve to calm her down, “Ugh, so many emotions spilling everywhere how gross.”   
  
“B-but I can’t help it that’s how I feel things,” Medaka said, breathing to regain herself.   
  
“Have you tried not feeling things?” Nanami helpfully suggested, but she had the feeling her advice was going to go ignored.   
  
“You’re still teamed up with the sick girl, huh? I guess it feels good when you protect people, like you’re a hero you know,” Emukae said, she just kept talking unaware if the others were listening or not. 

  
  
“No, we’re not together. She just keeps following me around. She says she has a one sided love for all of humanity, so I assume she’s a stalker for all of humanity as well,” Nanami said.   
  
“S-stalker!?” Medaka noticed that she was the only one overreacting to everything, which meant Mikan was not around. “Did you lose Mikan? That’s no way to treat your friends.”   
  
“I don’t want to be lectured by you of all people. At least I don’t treat my friends like an accessory.” 

 

“Huh?”  
  
Emukae gestured to the television. Onscreen she saw Hitoyoshi Zenkichi open up a room, with several signs hanging there reminding him he needed to work hard to become someone worthy of Medaka. He collapsed in front of Enoshima Junko and for the first time, Medaka felt jealousy for Junko’s small and petty existence. 

 

It was like an altar for a goddess.  
Hitoyoshi needed to climb the stairs every day.   
He needed to sacrifice his own blood.   
Just to reach her.   
Just for the chance to be worthy of her. 

But, she never asked to be a god. 

She ran away, and he chased her.  
It had always been like that for the two of them.   
When they were younger, she ran so far ahead Hitoyoshi got lost looking for her.   
She would hide herself in the maze of thorns.

Until she heard him crying over being unable to find her. 

But why did she always run away?  
She wanted to be with him.   
Medaka bit her lip hard.   
She imagined the blood pooling in her mouth, was the warmth of Zenkichi’s kiss.   
Because he was too far away to kiss her now.   
Even if he was right in front of her, he would not kiss her.   
He would not even touch her.   
Like she was a statue.   
Like she was a goddess. 

 

“It’s convenient for you when everybody else around you has to earn your love isn’t it?” Emukae said, embracing herself even though it felt burn marks where she touched her own skin. “Hitoyoshi-kun works so hard for you because he’s afraid you’ll abandon him again. All you have to do is receive his love and grace him with your presence.” 

  


“Th-that’s not what I want him to do,” She remembered Hitoyoshi’s lifeless body swinging as his feet refused to touch the floor. A face that smiled at her even in death. She had taken everything he had to give and she did not want it. 

 

“If you don’t want him to act that way then why didn’t you stop it? Is it because it benefitted you? As long as Zenkichi remained obsessed with you, then you’d never be alone.”   
  
“I… I didn’t know.”   
  
“You didn’t know your own childhood friend was like this? He was by your side all this time but you never once thought about him? Was he so boring that you were always looking away? You’re so cold.”   
  
“No, Zenkichi doesn’t need to become anything. He just needs to stay my Zenkichi, and I… I…” Words of love always flowed so easily out of her mouth, but this was different, she hesitated for a reason she did not understand. 

  
She imagined walking side by side with Zenkichi, but when she turned to catch a glimpse of his face there was nothing there. In the reflection of his eyes she saw that her own face revealed nothing as well. 

 

 _Two flirts still masking their faces,_ _  
_ _Yours and Mine._

 

She had been accused of this many times in the past. That she loved ideals more than people. So, this is what that meant. _Ours wasn’t an ideal relationship, it was a relationship of ideals._ She was so transfixed by the ideals of what their relationship should have been, she never once thought about what it was.   
  
_It was just a fantasy._ _  
_ _I was just playing a game with Zenkichi like we were still kids._

“I’m so cold.”  
_I play games just like Enoshima._ _  
_ _Because if there’s no one to play with._ _  
_ _Life’s so lonely._   
  
Medaka’s voice lowered into a more feral sounding growl. “There’s just one thing that doesn’t make sense about you, how much sense you’re making.” 

  
“Eh…?” Emukae shrugged her shoulders like they were on springs, and her head playfully bobbed up and down. She moved like the stitches connecting her were loose.   


  
“If you really are insane right now how are you capable of making all those observations? Are you just pretending to be incomprehensible so nobody will try to figure you out?”   
  
“Oh no,” She brought her hand to her mouth in exaggerated surprise. “You figured out Kumagawa-kun’s secret, now he won’t be an interesting character  anymore.” She clapped her hands together and mourned the loss of her senpai.   
  
“You can’t deflect everything with humor.”   
  
“I’ll deflect, I’ll deflect, I’ll deflect, and then there will be nothing left, and my life will be pointless. Ehehehehe,” Emukae suddenly felt bothered by how closely she was being watched. “Most people don’t care at all, but maybe you should try caring a little less.”   
  
“Hmmm?”   
  
“Empathy saves, and empathy destroys. If you try to sympathize with someone like me you might just break. I know, I know. You love humans right? So why don’t you act like nobody in this game, not a single one of us is human.”   
  
Disqualified from humanity.   
Human failure.   
Medaka the only human among them, like an innocent little girl falling down the rabbit hole.   
Like she was lost in a criminal wonderland. 

  
Emukae danced away then, like the cheshire cat had come to deliver its warning and then lost interest. The last thing to disappear was her smile. It lingered in Medaka’s memory afterwards. 

 

🦔

 

In the corner of the toy shop they were staying in, there was a long spider web. Nanami hated dust. Even though she was sick all of the time, and had a terrible stamina, and therefore she everything she did exhausted her, she could not stand any kind of dirt, dust or bacteria so she had a habit of obsessively cleaning. Even when she did not have the energy for it.  
  
Perhaps it was a result of living a life so sterile that she was never allowed to leave that one room, the doctors started to regard her less and less as a person and more as a human petri dish of diseases. It was so annoying, always getting diagnosed and diagnosed. They never made up their mind about what was killing her. Everything, apparently. That was what it felt like. Not that they ever listened to her input on the matter.   


 

  
She stopped to look at the spider web, as delicate and pale as her own fingers. There was a butterfly trapped inside of it. Medaka came to look as well, seeing the butterfly still try to struggle and twitch its wings even though they carried him nowhere.   
  
Medaka reached forward, and gently broke a few strings around the butterfly’s wings.   
Those wings, iridescent, ephemeral, fluttered once more. Nanami always hated fragility, because it only reminded her of herself, but she wondered if she killed such a beautiful thing, how would she ever live with herself? 

 

She reached up and snatched the spider from its web. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one by one she pulled all of its little legs off, and only then did she mercifully crush the body in the center. For a moment she wondered if her own blood would be colorless like an insect’s, if her own body was as hollow as a thorax, because she found it hard to believe that she had any color inside of her, or anything at all. 

  
“You didn’t need to crush the spider.”   
  
“What are you talking about? Unless the spider caught the butterfly it would have starved to death,” Nanami looked genuinely confused for once, her expression slipping.   
  
“You shouldn’t decide that so easily-”   
  
“If you just keep wanting to save the butterflies then the spider’s will die. Unless, did you want to sit here and think about it a little longer? I’m sure it’s symbolic of something or other, but while we were pondering the meaning of life the spider would have just eaten the butterfly.” Nanami finished tearing up the spider’s web. It made Medaka question whether or not Nanami saw herself as a spider, or a butterfly. She was frail, and yet her limbs were so long and spindly. “Kindness isn’t as beautiful as you think it is.”   
  
A butterfly, like Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.   
A spider, like Enoshima Junko.   
If she had killed one would the other be safe right now?   
  
Before they could continue their conversation, the two of them were interrupted by a girl with blonde hair, and presence that seemed to glow even in the low light.   
  
“Who is that again…?” Nanami whispered.   
“The girl who stabbed me,” Medaka whispered back.   
“Ah, she should have done a better job.”   
  
Nanami called out to her. “If you’re going to try to kill us again, you should start with me. I’m far easier to kill, that one’s just too stupid to die.” 

  
“I’m not here to kill.”   
  
“Disappointing…”   
  
“Don’t say it’s disappointing!” Medaka snapped at Nanami.   
  
“I came to attempt diplomacy. After all we’re the same kind of person.” The princess lowered her head in front of Medaka. Her entire body shook, as if she was carrying a massive weight on her shoulders. It was not just that she was strong, she had no other option but to be strong. “We’re both the kind of person whose eyes light up when watching friday the thirteenth.” 

  
“No that’s just you…” Medaka said. _Did I do it? Did I quip?_ She wanted to fist pump the air on a job well done, but she thought that would be kind of embarrassing. Having self awareness was a terrible burden that prevented her from doing what she loved.   
  
“I must keep going forward even if it means begging. My shame and humiliation mean nothing.”   
  
“I’m not asking you to beg.” She remembered Emukae’s earlier remarks about Zenkichi throwing himself at her feet. It made her uncomfortable. Sonia was more of a princess than she was after all. “You don’t have to keep moving forward. Sometimes you have to stop to cry.”   
  
Zenkichi and Kumagawa always moved forward no matter what, but that only seemed to hurt them in the end. Medaka did not feel like Zenkichi was a brave and noble hero, she just felt sad watching her friend hurt himself.   
  
“You always sound like a child when you talk about your feelings,” Sonia said, glaring up from her position lower than Medaka.   
  
“I am still a child.” She was only seventeen years old after all. “It’s creepy how no one in this city acts like they’re a child.” 

 

“Jesus! Shit! You son of a bitch!” Sonia said in frustration, and immediately corrected herself. “My, that’s so impolite. I was acting very uncool just then. Think about it this way. Did you ever think it’s unfair that people like you and me were born with so much?”  
  
“I’ve always thought that way,” Medaka said.   
  
“People are born into their station in life with purpose. If it was just random, I just happened to be born as a princess than that would be too cruel you know? The reason we were given so many gifts was not for ourselves, but so we could share them with other people. That tremendous responsibility we carry, is what makes it fair that we were gifted with so much.”   
  
“Do you think it’s wrong to live for yourself?”   
  
“We both have everything we need, if you want anything more you won’t be a princess anymore. You’ll just be a tyrant.” It’s greedy, Sonia said. As she did Medaka saw black and white swirling around in her eyes like a tempest storm, her eyes flickered indecisively back and forth between hope and despair.   
  
Medaka did not know what had destroyed her more. Was it really the despair that Enoshima Junko had given her? Sonia seemed completely destroyed by the hope she was supposed to provide for her people, they had already taken away everything to her, and as she touched the scarf around her neck she clung to the single thing she had left.   
  
Even though that made her a tyrant.   
Even though it was wrong for her to desire such a thing.

She no longer wanted to be right.  
Off with her head!   
She was fine with her head rolling off of her shoulders and landing in a basket.   
Her hair could turn from gold to white like Marie Antoinette and then she would be even purer.   
  
“We’re not allowed to be ourselves, because we have to be what others need us to be. We’ll be punished for being ourselves. For being anything other than a princess.” 

  
“You don’t look like a princess to me,” Medaka finally said.   
  
“What do I look like?”   
  
“A girl in love.” 

 

That line was so cheesy, Sonia did not know if what she wanted was to laugh or cry. “How can you say something like that? Really? How does the world look to you? I want to see it now…” 

 

Sonia felt like she was drifting away. “Give the medicine to Gundham, or… or are you going to take him from me too?” Her eyes spun back and forth until she looked like she was making herself dizzy. Sonia reached forward trying to grab a hold of Medaka, but her hands clenched around some invisible thing that only she was seeing instead. “Please, don’t take him. You’ve already taken everything else, Enoshima-san… I’ll give you anything but not him.”  
  
“I’m not-” Medaka figured the girl was delirious. When Sonia collapsed in front of her she caught her by the chest, and then carried her until she found somewhere safe to lay her own. She reached out to caress Sonia’s face for a moment, only to recoil when she saw the hand touching Sonia was not hers, but rather a hand covered in red acrylic nails. 

 

🦔  
  
_Just stop caring about others._ It was easier said than done. It was like a switch was broken in her own mind. She always considered her own pain less, because she had lived a much happier life than anybody else. She could never think of herself first. She was too busy thinking of others, trying to prove she was not spoiled, trying to prove she was a good person. 

 

The switch was flipped and then it got stuck. She only ever thought of others now. Her self regard plummeted into nothing. She was not above humans in her own mind, she was far below them. 

 

Sonia felt that they were punished for standing above others so much. Did that mean Medaka was trying to punish herself?

 

“You should have just let her have the medicine,” Nanami spoke up while they were walking to bring the medicine somewhere safer. “Did you even ask if I wanted to be saved by a person like you?”  
  
“Ehhh!?” 

 

“Or did you decide on your own, to kill that cute little butterfly to save a spider.”  
  
“You’re a spider?” 

  
“For a smart girl you always sound so confused.”   
  
That was not Medaka’s fault! People were so complicated. She wondered if she was less complicated than most people, or she just did not understand herself. She needed a mirror to look at herself. Where was Enoshima Junko again?   
  
Before she could think any further the two of them were interrupted again. Just like Emukae had, Yukizome Chisa grabbed both of the sides of the blue dress she was wearing underneath her apron, and lifted them in a curtsy.   
  
Blue dress.   
She looked like Alice, utterly lost. 

Medaka realized it was not wonderland she was lost in.  
It was “other people”.   
They were so deep, and different from her, with such unpredictable currents that she could drown in them. Just wind and rainfall hitting her from either side, and waves whipping against her. Other people were storms. Clouds blotted out all light in Yukizome’s eyes. They were so dark she could not make out anything, except for the thin outline of herself.   
Medaka realized right then she had no one to weather this storm with. There used to be someone by her side, who would hold an umbrella over her head and walk together with her underneath it, but he was gone now.   
  
“Yukizome-sensei. I know you must not trust me because of what Munakata-senpai said, but I didn’t do any of those things. You saw the girl who made that video was able to imitate other people, she did that to me to frame me.”   
  
“Umm, well duh that was obvious,” Chisa said putting a playful finger on her lips. She sounded a little bit like Junko. “I figured as much, but you know Kyosuke’s a hero. He fights way better if he has a villain to fight against, and who better than the cute little Kouhai he tried to raise up.”   
  
“You’re playing with his emotions!”   
  
“No, I’m not!” Yukizome raised her voice, her scream shrill. “This is what Kyosuke wants. He wants to be a hero, so I play damsel and let him protect me. He said he’d do anything for me, he promised…” 

 

“Sensei quit that. I’m worried. Adults are supposed to be reasonable.”  
  
Medaka believed in the rules with absolute faith.   
Because they were the rules.   
The path she was supposed to follow in life.   
The rails.   
All she had to do was walk down the path laid out for her, and she would live the right way.   
  
“You still have it in you to worry for other people? You’re weird,” Chisa said, she brought her hand up to her face, batted her eyes, and then only when she looked away discreetly did her eyes start to spin in that familiar way. “I influenced him, but I think it’s your fault he doesn’t believe you. I mean your whole family just died, and you’re not even sad about it. Most people would be unable to do anything but cry.”   
  
“There are more important things-”

 

“Do your own emotions matter so little?” Chisa curled her fingers around her chest. For a moment she looked like she was fondling her own breast and drooling with delight, another Junko-like behavior. Medaka started to seriously worry for the effect that Junko had on people. 

 

 _Are you any better?_ _  
_ _You made Zenkichi obsessed with you._   


  


  
“Were you just acting happy?” Chisa asked her. “I understand. I used to be so happy you know. I thought if I was always by Kyosuke’s side, then I’d never cry anymore. So, why now… why does it feel like I was never happy not even once? I went to school with him. I made happy memories with my two closest friends. I’m sure but… maybe it was someone else in those memories, maybe it wasn’t me.” 

 

Medaka lowered her guard just a little bit.  
It was impossible for her to see someone who was clearly suffering in front of her as an enemy.   
That was exactly what Yukizome was counting on. 

 

“Nanami-san, will you bring that medicine to me sweetie?”   
  
Nanami tilted her head to the side. “Oh, sure. I was wondering when you were both going to get this play-acting over with, it was a pretty boring production for the audience.” The audience that was just her. She snatched the medicine away from Medaka’s hand faster than Medaka could even react, and then handed it off to Yukizome.   
  
“What? Nanami, you need that!” 

 

Chisa gave one more curtsy before turning away, the rustles and folds of fabric underneath her dress followed behind her as she did. When that dress spun like that it looked like a blue rose opening, but then all the petals closed and Yukizome remained alone unseen by anyone. 

 

Nanami politely waved goodbye. “No I didn’t, this entire time I kept saying I didn’t ask for you to protect me. It’s not that you’re dumb, you just don’t listen. What an unruly child.”  
  
“Huh?”   
  
“Do you know the reason we kept running into people? That medicine was attracting them like a magnet. Now that it’s gone I might finally get some quiet.”   
  
“Is that what other people are to you?”   
  
“Annoying,” Nanami quickly answered. She was a little bit curious about her strange companion, that was hard to deny. That was why she kept talking. “Let me ask you something. Every single person we met today, do you think they’re better off because they were gifted? Maybe they could handle it better because of those gifts, but doesn’t it seem like those gifts only attracted misfortune?”   
  
And then…   
  
“In other words, this is a question of What is genius, and what isn’t? Honestly, I think being incompetent is what’s best, really. To be completely obtuse. To be so oblivious you never think for a second about the meaning of life. Calm, peaceful, and serene. You think you have to be kind to other people, because the world is kind to you but what if it’s the other way around?”   
  
The world is harsh to the brilliant. The world is harsh to the competent.   
Beauty always fades. Life always rots away.   
The world is kind to the unkempt. The world is kind of the incompetent.   
Ugliness stays forever. Everything that is rotting keeps rotting.   
But if you figure that out, if you realize that, it’s already over right then.   
  
Medaka shook her head. “You don’t get it. I’m stronger than other people, that’s why I have to be the one who helps them.”

 

“It’s not that you’re strong, it’s just other people are weak,” Nanami seemed self centered. The kind of person who did not even see that other people besides her existed. She was locked away in her own room. “It’s their fault for being born so weak, the same way it’s my fault for being born with this sickness.”   
  
Medaka kept shaking her head. She closed her eyes as if she had just wanted to shut everything out. A childish tantrum, but she never allowed herself to be a child until now. “I don’t want to see the world that way. Even if that’s true, I don’t want to see it,” All that was left was her stubborn denial.   
  
“How does the world look to you?” Nanami asked again.   
  
Medaka did not care anymore.   
She did not want to see the world she looked at through her eyes. She had been herself her entire life, and frankly she was tired of it. She was worn out on her own identity. If Kurokami Medaka was supposed to be like gravity, then she was the collapse that caused a black hole. All she could do was continue to collapse inwards, with no hope of getting out of the gravity field, no escaping herself.   
  
There was only falling. There was only darkness without light. Every time someone looked at her like she was greater than human, she felt less and less. This was never what she wanted. She thought it was wrong to want for herself, so she never was clear with what she wanted and this was the result she was stuck with. The feeling of being trapped behind her own eyes looking forward, like her own head was a prison, like she was staring at a television unchanging as images flashed before her.   
  
Is this what Enoshima Junko felt?   
An unfamiliar red ate away at the edge of her vision as she strained herself, it looked like rust.   
For some reason the world before her eyes was moving slower. Almost unbearably slow.   
It was… boring.   
The same thing happened over and over again, she was betrayed, and betrayed and betrayed, and betrayed, and betrayed, but that betrayal no longer stung her if anything she felt like it was just getting predictably now.   
  
To her, after having experienced that island. To her, always there next to Zenkichi. To her now, with this person before her eyes, she didn’t think it was even worth the trouble of thinking of an answer. What she saw through her eyes, it was just lonely… It was far duller, and far less colorful than what a normal girl might see.   
  
And so she said nothing.   
Instead, she looked away and thought of someone else.   
So, how does the world look through Zenkichi’s eyes? How did she look in Zenkichi’s eyes?   
She wanted to know more an anything.   



	23. Necrofantasia

**Chapter 2: God Punishes the Elite** **  
** **Day One: Part One**

**  
  
**

『You’re so cold, Yasuke-chan...』  
  
“How are you even more annoying dead then you are alive?”  
  
Yasuke rationally knew that it was not Kumagawa speaking to him really, just his own voice, so he really wished he would just shut up already. He sat in the hospital room, put-out cigarettes littering the ground at his feet. He smelled like a light snow of ash had fallen on him.  
  
Yasuke waited for Kamukura to come back. If Yasuke went somewhere else, Kamukura might not find him. It was lonely being lost, more lonely than anything else. _I’m not lonely or anything. I’ve said it over and over again now, and I’ll just keep on saying it. I’m fine as long as you’re with me. As long as you’re here, I’ll never be lonely! I’ll say it again and again if I have to._ That girl, her hair like red flowers, her eyes raining, enflamed, turned a shade redder with tears said as she held onto him. He could not hold her back. His hands could not hold anything. There were no dreams or anything in those hands.  
  
That was how he knew it was lonely. 

  
When his mother died she looked so peaceful. She never looked that way during life. She was happy even, hanging there in suspension free from everything holding her down, gravity, and especially her son. He hated how happy she looked without him. He hated her happiness. He could not hate her.  
  
Perhaps because of that, or because of scars and bruises that went all the way to his bones, that discolored the surface and sunk into his marrow, he always felt like he had a closer relationship with death than most. If the reaper was Komaeda’s friend, it was Matsuda’s jilted ex-lover. The kind that you thought was beautiful no matter how many times she broke your heart. The scars of her love were left all over his body, they were written into his skin.  
  
When he was younger he remembered one day just like that, his mother stopped covering his body in kisses. Discolored, splotches were left on his skin instead. His mother stopped helping him get dressed, so he had to learn to dress himself. He wore long sleeves, and kept his clothes unkempt as possible so nobody would notice the way he was marked on his skin. Even when he was being hurt, he wanted to protect her, because that was the only way he could be strong.  
  
But she never wanted him to protect her in the first place. No, she was probably not even thinking of him. Nobody asked to be protected by him, and so he was alone in this room. 

 

『Yasuke-chan, I need attention otherwise I’ll die. I need you to love me now, to make up for how unloved I was in my childhood.』

“You’re already dead.” 

 

『You killed me. You murderer.』  
  
Yep, he was completely alone in this room.  
  
The cigarette between his lips was the closest he came to kissing warmth. Even as burning ashes from the cigarette naughtily licked at his lips, they were a dead blue as if all blood had left them, and they shivered in hypothermia. He did not want to suffocate in ash necessarily, he just wanted to make it harder to breathe. Just let the smoke he was breathing slowly burn away at his heart. If he breathed in the grey deep enough, it would run through his veins instead of red. He could clog them up with black tar.  
  
He wanted to be alone, but no matter how hard he tried his shadow would not leave him. It was like someone had removed his shoe and sock, and then taken a needle and stabbed it through his toes, dragging the string along through the holes in order to messily sew it to his feet.  
  
His shadow, just negative space, just emptiness, 『I’m bored.』  
  
“Why?”

 

『Your angst isn’t that compelling to me.』  
  
“If you have nothing better to do why don’t you go kill yourself and save us all the headache.” 

 

『But I’m already dead.』 Yasuke blew smoke again. The harsh hospital lights above shone down, turning the discolored grey atmosphere into dancing wil o’ the wisps. The smoke swirling around him. The people he loved. All of them, they were all ghosts. What he breathed was nothing more than the fumes of the swamp he found himself slowly sinking into.  
  
He realized he was in pain, but he did not care anymore.  
He could not tell if it was a dream or reality, but he did not care anymore.  
It’s like sinking into a bottomless swamp. The more he treaded water the further he sank, descending deeper and deeper into the muck, until he no longer knew why he was resisting its pull. The swamp simply swallowed him up. His body filled with slime and moss, to the point where he himself was nothing more than filth. He was scum, inside and out, until the slugged slathered over him erased the colors that previously filled out his form. He became more mud than person.  
  
Flowers bloomed in the swamp too, but he was so far deep he could no longer see them. 

  
When he woke up the warmth of his body slowly decomposing surrounded by peat and moss, embraced by dead leaves, nibbled on by insects, was replaced with something cold and unfeeling. He sat all the way up from his sleep, and looked to see he was sitting in an operating room. Kumagawa sat next to him, kicking his feet like he was an impatient child.  
  
Hinata sat on the operating table next to them. He was undressed except for a light blue hospital robe that barely clung to him. He wore the front part so open it was possible to see the line that divided his chest, and his well defined stomach. His skin tan, his body warm to the touch even in a room like this that was kept cold enough to preserve corpses. He had the warmth of someone lying naked in the sun. His eyes were bright and round like almonds. His eyes fluttered lightly in anxiety, his eyelashes short, spiked and boyish.  
  
The Yasuke that stood in front of him, his face was unhealthily pale. He had long narrow eyes, that seemed to have shadows pooling in their corners from unrest. He had girlish eyelashes, white long fingers, frigid to the touch.  
  
They only had one similarity between the two of them. They both looked lonely. 

  
“Y-you…” Hinata finally spoke up, Yasuke already noticed despite how belligerent he acted, he was as shy as a schoolgirl. It was probably because he was in front of Yasuke, who genuinely was what Hinata pretended to be. “You still haven’t told me what talent you’re going to give me.”  
  
“What talent do you want?”  
  
“I can pick one?”  
  
“Isn’t that the entire reason you came here?”  
  
Hinata flinched. Those green eyes of his were green as bacteria, sick with envy. Yasuke saw desire in them. Not necessarily directed at his talent, but what Hinata thought Yasuke’s talent enabled him to be. Someone who did not care about anyone else. Someone who never let their feelings reach him.  
  
Yasuke was alone.  
Hinata was uncomfortable around other people, but he was never comfortable alone either.  
  
“I w-well…” Hinata said awkwardly, as he scratched at his cheek. “It’s kind of hard to decide what you want to be for the rest of your life when you’re this young, isn’t it?”  
  
“This attitude is why you never developed a talent in the first place.”  
  
“Ugh, I’ll show you attitude.”  
  
“Did you seriously sign up for this project and risk your life without even having a specific talent in mind? You might have discovered your secret hidden talent all along, the Super High School Level Idiot.”  
  
“You’re really pissing me off you know!”  
  
“I know, I’m trying to do exactly that.” Yasuke leaned forward as he condescendingly placed a finger on Hinata’s lips. “Is that why you never developed a talent? You always tried so hard to be liked you didn’t have the energy to try at anything important?”  
  
“At least someone likes me, unlike you.”  
  
“Really, who?”  
  
“Umm… I had friends in middle school, you know. I don’t act antisocial because I think I’m better than everybody else like somebody I know.”  
  
“Do you keep in contact with any of them?”  
  
“Well, no but…” 

  
“Because you thought you were going to make new, better friends at Hope’s Peak, right?” Hinata really was like Yasuke. Yet, it was an image painful to look at, a reflection of what he would be like if he got to live a normal life that was denied him. Yasuke scrunched his eyes closed to look away from the mirror, “Anyway, just pick a talent it can be anything.”  
  
“Well… something Nanami would find interesting maybe.”  
  
“So you’re attempting life risking surgery to get laid?”  
  
“It’s not like that!” Hinata’s face lit up with his fluster as blood pumped to his ears. In comparison, Yasuke looked like a vampire with dead skin and empty, collapsed veins. “She’s just a friend. We talk every day, but it always feels like she was the more special one between us… I wanted to show her something amazing.”  
  
“So you’re doing it for a girl? That’s just a shitty cliche,” Yasuke loved being a hypocrite. Loved it. He doubted Nanami really factored into the decision at all. Hinata did not seem like the type who could do something for someone else, he was always busy worrying about himself. “How about I make you the Ultimate Male Escort then?”  
  
“H-how would you even teach me that talent?” 

 

“I’d give you surgery to make that small dick you’re always trying to compensate for way bigger. Then, I don’t know, sprinkle flower petals all over the operating table or something.”  
  
“Can you do that?”  
  
“So, it is small just like your entire attitude.”  
  
“Look it’s not small at all.” 

 

“Why would I want to look at that?”  
  
Hinata suddenly wrapped his hand around Yasuke’s lower arm, and jerked it forward. Hinata dragged the helpless boy forward until his hand, wrestling away control of his own arm for him. Yasuke tried to make his escape and look away from the robe that Hinata lifting up. As the two of them wrestled one another, Hinata got so close that Yasuke could feel the muscles shifting underneath his skin. Suddenly all the wind was knocked out of him and his legs gave out underneath him. They both fell forward.  
  
Yasuke looked down at his hand falling right in the middle between Hinata’s legs. He felt it beneath his palm. It twitched, and a shiver ran through Yasuke. Hinata moaned in a way that made Yasuke want to punch Hinata in the face and scream at him to shut up. He immediately got to his feet and tried to run away again. “This is inappropriate doctor patient relationships!” 

  
“Then admit it’s not small!” Hinata said chasing after him. 

 

『Yasuke-chan, even I noticed how much sexual tension there is in this flashback.』  
  
“Shut up, it’s my sexual tension filled flashback, I’m the one who gets to narrate it.” 

 

Hinata finally laid back on the operating table. “So, I’m going to be helpless underneath you just like this?”  
  
“Have you ever shut up? Not even once? In your entire damn life?” Yasuke had asked Komaeda the same question. Sometimes he felt bad because Komaeda genuinely did not know when to be quiet, but Komaeda always reassured him he liked when people told him to shut up because he knew he was no longer annoying them.  
  
This boy was fragile, just like Komaeda was.  
That was Matsuda’s first and lasting impression from the moment he saw them, their fragility.  
They were like flowers waiting to be torn apart between his fingers.  
They would thank him for tearing them apart. 

  
  
“I thought about asking for a baseball talent, but if there’s somebody else with that talent then wouldn’t I look lame compared to them?”  
  
“I think you would look lame compared to anybody else on earth. There’s just no hope for you.”  
  
“I thought I was supposed to become hope!”  
  
“You can’t create something from nothing. That’s just science. You’d know that if you weren’t such a talentless idiot.”  
  
“Ugh, you always give me such a hard time.”  
  
“The reason you never got anywhere in life is because you always took the easy way out, I’m helping you.”  
  
“By acting like a bitch.”  
  
“I’m not acting like a bitch, I am a bitch,” Yasuke corrected him with a condescending smile. 

 

Hinata started to learn Yasuke never smiled because he was happy, it was more like a grimace to show his teeth. “Well, like I said I don’t know what I want to become. No matter how hard I think-”  
  
“You must not be thinking very hard like usual-”  
  
“I just can’t decide, but if…” Hinata looked up and for the first time Yasuke saw those colorful, wide eyes for what they were, empty. The same way Komaeda’s would look if they were not always swirling with fog. “If I could become someone like you, that wouldn’t be too bad.”  
  
In that moment, his heart stopped. A jolt of electricity fried his nerves, and caused the muscle that contracted his heart to lock into place. He felt himself die, and then come back to life again in one agonizingly long moment. 

 

Yasuke dropped his scalpel and finally said. “You’ll die. The surgery… I’m going to kill you.” 

 

Hinata did not look scared for his life at all. He had a sad look in his eyes like he wanted to apologize, the same one that Komaeda always carried. “I swear I’ll do better in my next life.” He reached forward and puzzled Yasuke close to him, pressing his head into Yasuke’s chest as if to beg. “I’ll be smart and everything bad that happens will be everybody else’s fault.” 

 

 _If I’m reborn, I want to be a kind person like you. That’s why…_  
“If I die, will you remember someone like me?” 

  
Yasuke let the door close on the room, and on that memory. As he walked along, his shadow walked on the wall with him. 

 

『Awe, Yasuke-chan he wuvs you.』 

  
“He des-pwizes me.”  
  
『You’re his fwiend.』  
  
“I’m his muw-de-wer.” 

 

『You knew in that moment didn’t you, how desperately he wanted to escape himself. He would even die and become someone else.』 

  
Yasuke threw open the door to another memory, looking away from the white halls. In that room Kamukura was sitting on a bed in the biology lab, his black hair falling down to his shoulders like he had been dunked head first in oil. Somewhere in that mess of drowned raven feathers and tangles, his face was hidden. 

 

Kamukura no longer whined when he was insulted like Hinata used to. He did not make a face and pucker his lips like he just swallowed something sour. The color had completely drained from his cheeks. He did not cry when Yasuke was too mean to him. He never responded no matter what Yasuke said.  
  
Yasuke preferred it that way, he did not want anyone to talk to in the first place. Hinata filled the space between them with too much noise, it bounced off of Yasuke and irritated him. He could finally work in peace. There was only one person he wanted to talk to anyway. 

 

It was just about an order of importance.  
It was not like he did not care at all about what other people thought of him.  
It was just that some small part of his heart was always worrying about the feelings of one person in particular, because she was more important than anyone else.  
Yet, he concerned himself with this unimportant person like this.  
This… this… unremarkable reserve course student.  
This boy. 

  
Yasuke chopped him lightly on the head with his manga volume. “I worked so hard on that brain surgery, and now you’re even more empty headed than before.”  Yasuke reached forward and ran his hands through that sleek black hair, and then sharply knotted it up in his fist, pulling Kamukura’s head forward. “And when are you going to brush this hair?”  
  
“...”  
  
“I should have just used an ice pick if this was how you were going to turn out.” 

 

“...”  
  
“Say something I know you can talk. The speech centers of the brain aren’t even located where I was cutting you open.” 

 

“...”  
  
He reached forward slowly to caress Kamukura’s cheeks, the bones of which were higher than when he had been Hinata which gave his face an even shallower look. “Every time I touch you, I leave scars doesn’t it hurt?”  
  
“...”  
  
“I knew you were going to turn out like this. It’s this shitty personality of yours. It’s an incurable sickness. They really expect someone like you to become the world’s hope? You can’t do anything for anyone, because it’s all about you in the end isn’t it?”  
  
“...”  
  
“No only are you selfish, you’re also lazy. You wanted to escape living such a boring life so badly, but you couldn’t just man up and kill yourself you forced me to do it.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I don’t remember how you used to act at all. That’s how forgettable your old personality was to me. They told me to erase your old persona but it wasn’t even that hard because you were barely there in the first place. There’s not enough you to fill up this body of yours.” 

 

“...”  
  
“Say anything! Say anything, damnit! Tell me how much you hate me!” 

 

“...”  
  
Yasuke pushed the boy’s shoulders back and he fell backwards onto the bed still in his operating robe. Yasuke climbed over the bed catlike, on all fours. He moved his hands and knees until he was on top of Kamukura. He hovered over him, the frames of their bodies overlapping to where they could be mistaken for one. 

 

“You came to me broken and I couldn’t do a single thing for you… I can never… do anything… for anybody… what kind of doctor am I?” Yasuke lined their faces up only so he could he could scream in Kamukura’s face to get some kind of a reaction. 

 

Kamukura’s lips finally parted.  
“Ya…”  
_Don’t._  
“Suke…”  
  
A single tear ran from the corner of Kamukura’s eyes. He looked hurt and confused, and completely unable to understand the pain he was now feeling. For a fleeting moment, Yasuke wondered if Kamukura had cried the tears he himself was unable to cry.  
  
“I hate idiots like you,” Yasuke said as he pushed himself away. That was how the memory ended, Yasuke knew that after this he just spent the next hour fussing with Kamukura’s hair and trying to brush it while Kamukura sat there unhelpfully. 

 

The memory ended, but Yasuke lingered there. He stepped out of his shadow. He took his scalpel and placed it on Kamukura’s neck. Only one prick, and a single drop of blood would fall from him like a tear.  
  
The carotid artery supplies blood to the brain, then the juggular returned that blood to the superior vena cava, and then the heart. How romantic. If Yasuke sliced it open that warm blood would spill everywhere. The reason that Hinata’s face used to turn red, was because blood pumped through his exterior carotid artery and into capillaries just underneath his skin.

  
Yasuke drained all of the blood out of him, and yet he was still alive. He suffered a fatal wound, and he lived, but living just seemed to make him worse, more empty, as if everything was draining out of a crack. No matter what was inside of him he would never be fulfilled.  
  
Yasuke closed his eyes. Just for a second he wanted to stop thinking of them as two separate people. He wanted to forget about the lines and boundaries that made their body distinct. That was when they forgot they were Kamukura and Yasuke to begin with, they forgot they were alone. That was when you overlap limbs with someone you love. That was when you became tired and fell asleep together.  
  
Yasuke wondered how deep he would have to cut, until all of the lines blurred, and the two of them became indistinct together. He leaned down, to cross that distance, even for a moment ...anything was fine. 

 

His own shadow reached a finger, touching Yasuke’s lips, giving him pause. 『You can’t kiss someone and bring them back to life Yasuke-chan, this isn’t a fairytale, we don’t have time for that kind of necrofantasia.』 

 

“...Shut up. I’m not a rotten manga-for-brains like you.” 

 

『Why are you so hung up on the dead anyway? Your mother doesn’t give a shit about what kind of person you grew up into, because she’s dead ya know?』  
  
“I’ll kill you.” 

 

『Another dead person to obsess over! That’s just what you need! Is that what Junko was to you, just a beautiful corpse?』  
  
“You don’t know anything about her…” 

 

『I know her better than you did. Is that why you liked to spend time with Nagito-chan, because being with him was like talking to a corpse?』 

 

“Stop it, just shut your damn filthy mouth…” 

 

『Besides this is what you do to the people you love when they’re alive.』 

  
His own hands reached down and crossed over Kamukura’s neck. Strangulation. An incredibly personal way to kill someone. They could feel the warmth of your hands, and your face would be the last thing their eyes ever saw as they faded away. Yasuke tried to look away but his own hands were doing this. He held on tight and refused to ever let go like a lover’s embrace.  

  
He wanted to hold every part of him this way. Not just his neck, his veins, his clockwork heart, he wanted to reach inside of Kamukura and drag all of them out.  
  
Then, Kamukura disappeared and he was strangling Ryoko instead.  
  
_“Is this also for the sake of Enoshima Junko?”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“No, this is for my sake.”_

 

Then, Ryoko disappeared and he was strangling Kumagawa instead. 

 

『 _Killing me won’t protect her, it’s just one person murdering another._ 』 

  
_“It won’t even be a murder. Nobody would even investigate the death of a reserve student like you.”_ _  
  
_

『 _But I’d let you kill me Yasuke-chan, because you’re my first friend. So kill me.  Without saying it’s for anyone else. Just kill me by your own will. The world will just go on._ 』 

 

Then, he squeezed his hands tight around Soushun Murasme. 

 

_“... I’m awful. I don’t particularly want to think about that. If I forgot the person I care for and if they died… that thought is unbearable… So I’ll protect them. No matter what happens I’ll protect them.”_

 

He was just strangling a shadow underneath him. Once he decided to fall, he just sank and sank deeper without even looking up towards the light. He fell into the water as black as ink all the way up until his elbows. 

 

The muck spread inside of him. His body look like it had sprung a like. His blocked blackened, tainted the color of his skin. The foul tar flooded over him, and violated him. He rocked bad and fell off the bed. He tried to get up but just dropped to his knees again, and he heard the filth within him slosh around with all his movements. 

 

When he spoke, black ink fell out of his mouth like drool.  
He could hear his voice from his mouth, but it revolted him.  
The voice gave him a feeling of discomfort and just living like this made him want to vomit, but no one noticed and everyone was under the impression that it was still his voice. 

 

No one could see him for the filth he knew he was. 

His shadow stood over him.『It’s not just Hinata-kun who wants to stop being himself, it’s you isn’t it? You said Hinata-kun always acts tough to scare people away because he’s afraid of them, but don’t you do it because you fear for them. You know what you’ll do to them.』  
  
“No, I’m just a rude bastard.” 

 

『The problem is you’re just too kind, but that doesn’t make the terrible things you’ve done any less terrible, it just tears you apart inside. I mean, I’m a bad person who does bad things so can you imagine how it must feel for a good person to do bad things?』 

  
“I don’t care.”

 

『You care. You care so much you kill yourself every day. But it won’t work, you won’t die no matter what.』 He felt Kumagawa’s hands falling over his, Kumagawa’s fingers slithering in between his own like they were covered in scales. 『It's impossible to throw yourself away like that. You're not trash, nobody is, not Komaeda, and not even me. You can try, but who you are will always catch up to you in the end.』  
  
“Just let me go. I don’t want to keep living hating myself forever.” 

 

『You can't stop hating, it's you. It's who you are. That’s why you're scum, you’re never going to let those feelings go no matter how much they poison you. There is no reason someone like you who can't scrub off the muck inside of him can ever taste hope...』  
  
He was well aware of this.  
Hope will never be a part of his life. He never felt it not even once, and now that he was corrupted by her, now that he’s committed the sins that he has, _why would I ever experience it?_  
This was the end for Matsuda Yasuke. 

 

Yet Kumagawa whispered something in his ear, the hissing of a snake he could not quite make out as he felt a fork tongue lick his earlobe.

『But you don’t need _____ to _____, you don’t need anything at all.』  
  
Yasuke could not hear him, because the tar filled his ears and plugged them up. As he sank further and further, the muck flooded into the corners of his eyes, darkness ate away at the edges of his vision and as the good leaked from his eye cavity into his brain he could not see anymore. 

 

 _Drip._ _  
_ _Drip._ _  
_ _Drip._  
  
He just felt drops fall away from him, as if something was leaking out of the wound on his head. 

 

🦔  
  
Yasuke woke with a start. Sweat fell down his forehead in large beads, streaking down his face, and his hair fell in front of his eyes. He looked down at his own hands, those empty, crooked looking fingers. 

 

 _There’s no string tying us together._ _  
_ _All there is is blood, and the scars I gave you._

 

He was suddenly interrupted by someone grabbing the cigarette he had fallen asleep with between his lips, and throwing it onto the floor, crushing it again and again underneath her feet.  
  
“There are so many health risks for smoking while you’re smoking, you risk heart disease, and stroke and so many other things… and falling asleep before you put a cigarette out you could have started a fire.” 

 

He saw an apron and a girl covered in bandages as he lazily looked up behind half lidded eyes. Of course, Tsumiki Mikan of all people would show up in front of him right now to lecture him. “Annoying me is a serious health risk to you, and yet here you are.”  
  
“Ah! I’m sorry for being annoying! You can put one of your cigarettes out on me if you want!”  
  
Yasuke’s patience was in the negative numbers right now, and it just kept sinking. He stood up, his thin skeletal frame creaking with the effort as he did. “Someone like you isn’t even worth bullying. I’m just going to say nice things about you from now on.”  
  
“Nooooooo, please be mean to me,” Mikan cried after him. He saw the fat tears in the corners of her eyes. How did a girl like that cry so easily, wear her wounds so exposed, when he could only cry in front of Junko. When he wore his clothes so disheveled like this to hide his scars underneath.  
  
He tried to walk away from her, but Mikan suddenly grabbed after him and yanked and at the same time his foot slipped on one of the bandages that had come undone on her leg. The two of them tumbled together, and he fell underneath Mikan, and found himself being suffocated by her chest. It was the least sexy fanservice to ever happen, in fact being this close to another person so soon made him want to retch.  
  
He pushed her off, as violently as he could. “You bitch! You did that on purpose.” _Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross. You can’t be a doctor, you’re ill. You’re sick._ He grabbed at the bandages around her arm, and ripped them apart. It felt like he was ripping her clothes off.  
  
Her arm was covered in little nicks and cuts, like a rose vine had wrapped itself around her. That was what it was to be kissed by roses, the closer you got the more the needles dug into you. Some of the wounds were still fresh, and he saw drops of blood fall away from her arm until they became beautiful pink petals. He saw the characters for _Ugly Pig_ carved into the inside of her arm.  
  
“You cut those words into your arm didn’t you? You act like everybody in the whole world hates you, but in the end it’s all about you isn’t it? No one could hate you more than you hate yourself.”

  
Mikan, that fragile little flower, trembling underneath him.  
How easy it would be to tear all the petals off.  
_She loves me._ _  
_ _She loves me not._  
  
“Of course I hate myself. I’m… I’m no good. I tried to be a good person, I tried to be better than the way people treated me, but I can’t do anything for anyone. I’m u-useless and-”  
  
“Do you know why you can’t do things for other people?” 

 

“Uh-um… why?” 

“It’s because even when you help other people, you’re just thinking about yourself. When you let other people use you, when they walk all over you, you still get off on it.” 

  
He hated touching other people. Whenever he did, he just left his muck on them. He squeezed Mikan’s wrist hard enough, until it turned a different color and he saw his own discolored handprint. People should never touch each other they just get more and more filthy.  
  
“How is someone with such low self esteem as you such an egoist? God, you don’t even see the faces of your bullies, or the people you want to help. Nobody exists in your little world except you.”  
  
“I just wanted to be useful… Just to one person.”  
  
“See, that’s what you get from it. You’re not thinking about them one bit, you just think about how it hurts you, how it helps you. The entire world is filtered through your selfish, empty little head…” 

 

His pale fingers curled around her like they were bones trying to drag her down.  
Perhaps this is what he really wanted.  
Not someone to live for, but someone to drown with him.  
_Sink together._ _  
_ _Falling down, falling down._  
And then being buried with their bones in the same coffins.  
  
“It hurts…” She whined. 

 

“Can people even hurt you now? You don’t even see them. How can they hit you when they can’t even reach you. Their hatred, or pain, or anything, none of it will ever even matter to you.”  
  
“I was hurt, and… I was so scared, I just wanted to run away, but there was no one to run to.”  
  
“You know what I think. You were already like this when Junko found you. She didn’t break you at all, she just enabled you. You were just looking for a reason to hurt someone else.”  
  
He did not fall in love with Junko he jumped in. He held his breath and jumped in without hesitation. Just like how a child would when jumping into a pool. He swam so deep into her that she became a part of him.  
  
Now he heard her voice all the way down to his bones. 

 _We were living out a pure fairy-tale._ _  
_ _Longing and longing for a noise known as love._ _  
_ _Our hearts slowly burned each other…_ _  
_ _But that’s love right? Right? Right? Right? Right?_

“But it doesn’t matter to you. If you heal someone or hurt them, it doesn’t make a difference. Let’s say you nurse someone back to health and they become happy, why would you give a damn? There’s no such thing as sharing happiness with another person. You’d just be jealous because they’re happy and you’re not.” 

 

He finally let go of her hand, and reached towards her neck. He wondered how easy it would be, to snap that neck, like popping the head off of a flower. He felt so jealous of someone who could cry that easily, because he already knew whether he cried or not nobody would come to help him. The doctors would continue ignoring him, and his mother would continue to forget him.  
  
“That’s why, whether you fix or break people it’s not going to matter. You’ll still be just as broken in the end. It’s all so damn pointless.” 

 

He finally looked into Mikan’s eyes. There was something fleeting and ephemeral there, the remains of joy, or even the future, of laughing with you one more time. They were so pure, so clear, the tears she cried only made them clearer. He remembered looking at Kumagawa’s eyes and thinking the same thing.  
  
Just like clean water.  
Water that could wash anything away.  
She cried not for herself, but for him. 

  
“God, I’m so sick of love. I’m so lovesick. I’m so sick. You could kill me if you wanted. Remove your love rival for Enoshima Junko or whatever love story you have going on in your own head. Do whatever. I don’t give a damn.” 

 

All Mikan did was reach to the floor.  
She tried to collect the dirty bandages up in her hands. She held them there as if to caress them. As if she was holding onto something precious, but then the wind came from the open window and blew them away. He watched them as they went.  
  
“It’s not like I disagree Matsuda-kun…”  
  
Her voice trembled.  
  
“Because, I’ve seen people hurt me and then turn around and be kind to others, and I’ve seen people who are kind to other people just brush me off and ignore me, it’s easier to think that everybody in the whole world is unkind, that it’s people who hate you that are hurting you but...” 

 

She brushed his hand aside, he felt the fleeting touch of her hand against his. “Why is it kind people, why is it people who love you that hurt you the most?” 

 

 _I’m sorry._ _  
_ _I’m sorry for loving you, Matsuda-kun_ .  
Yes, it would have hurt so much less if she never truly cared about him. A toy, a doll tossed aside with all its stuffing torn out could not hurt the way a person could. A corpse did not feel anything because it was already dead.  
  
He couldn’t keep pretending forever that Junko never loved him.  
  
He had no answer for Mikan’s question. He had no intention of telling her things they both already knew. Even if she didn’t know, he wasn’t about to go out of his way to tell her. 

 

🦔

 

He carried Mikan over his shoulder out of the hospital.  
  
“You’re so ugly, my eyes hurt. I’m tired of looking at you.”  
  
That was the only reason he gave for carrying her away. He went looking for Emukae to throw the girl back at her feet, and whatever happened after that, if they both fell in love or killed each other, or did both, he did not particularly care. 

 

It was then he came after Medaka crying alone. Nanami was asleep on her lap.  
For a moment he saw a young girl with red pigtails there instead, one who used to clench the back of his shirt and cried into it. As she spilled her wet tears all over him, he felt oddly warm.  
Warm enough that he might melt, and her face might melt too. After all witches were not supposed to cry. Then, when the two of them had melted together they could forget that they had been Matsuda Yasuke and Enoshima Junko.  
  
But, the truth was all that times she cried were probably just acting on her part. He thought he was being strong for her. All you need is to believe you are helping someone else, especially if you hated yourself, and you could feel strong. But in the end he was being strong for nobody.  
  
That was led him to Hope’s Peak. That was why he was grabbed, by Kirigiri’s, Enoshima’s, The old Man’s, the reserve course’s, he was grabbed by all of those hands and torn apart. Then with the pieces of his corpse were sewn back together for the Kamukura Project. 

 

He dropped Mikan on the ground, and heard her behind him with an _oomph._  
He had no idea what to say, then he remembered he was an insensitive jerk and decided to just ask her straightforward. “Why are you crying anyway? Is your perfect life, and perfect childhood friend a little too perfect for you?”

“Matsuda-kun, you must understand how he feels…” He looked at the television and saw Zenkichi sleeping alone on the screen in front of her. “Zenkichi is alone, and I made him feel that way.” 

  
Matsuda smiled. Such a smile was like an illness on his face, sick and hideous. He just looked wrong smiling, that was why he almost never smiled. “That’s a pointless thing to cry over.” He sounded like Kumagawa, damnit. He felt his feet start to sink into his shadow once more. “No matter what you did, your feelings would never have reached Heat.”  
  
“I-is it because I’m not a normal girl?”  
  
“No, you’re no different from everybody else. Think about it, childhood friends are just romantic nonsense. Just because you’ve known someone for a long time doesn’t mean you understand them, Junko and me, Zenkichi and you, Fuyuhiko and Peko… we’re all the same.”

 

“No. I don’t believe that. I don’t want to just give up because it’s impossible to understand others.”  
  
“No, it’s not impossible. It’s just the more you understand them the more you’ll come to hate them. You’re actually lucky that Heat is so distant, this way he’ll never come to hate you like I hate Junko.” Don’t become me, that was the best advice Matsuda could ever give. He stumbled around like a drunk, but he never even drank anything. He was drunk on life, drunk on love, all he ever did was just keep drinking it and just keep swallowing it down. 

 

Matsuda wasn’t sure if he should be lecturing her in the first place. He hadn’t done anything for anyone else. He just let himself get used. He just felt useful, like an irreplaceable piece, until he was broken. Then he just got upset that nobody could use him anymore, and he felt sad because he could no longer feel used.

He broke out into a cold sweat, and his body trembled. These were just withdrawal symptoms, because he had an addiction to being used. He could never, not even once, take a healthy dose of human interaction. It was only all or nothing for him. He loved them with his whole heart or he just did not give a damn. That was why his heart broke each and every time, that was why he painted the floor with his own blood as everything spilled out when he was broken.  
  
“So what?” Medaka asked, as if looking for some savior. “What could I possibly do for Zenkichi? What should I have done for him? What should I do?”  
  
Don’t ask me that.  
You were having a happy dream. 

Even he dreamed once. Now there was not dreams or anything else in his hands. There was only the trace of happiness, and a future he once saw in his eyes. Once you realize it’s a dream you have to wake up, and cry, and forget about it. There’s nothing left.  
You can’t move forward.  
Just like Enoshima and I.  
Why would you want a real relationship after that?  
  
“Thinking you can do something for others is just a happy dream.  Whether Hitoyoshi-kun finds happiness or not, it has nothing to do with you.” 

  
Yasuke felt his legs giving out under him again. His knees wobbled and the bones clanged into each other. He fell forward, and he brought his head into the ground. His dark hair fell over his eyes. 

 

“If you want to be kind you should just stop loving him. That’s the selfless thing to do.” His head felt so heavy, and he felt himself sinking again. There was no one who would sink with him though, except his own shadow. “Please… please stop loving him.”  
  
Medaka reached forward and cupped her hands on each of his cheeks. She forced him to look up again. Eyes that welled up with emotion in a way that junko’s never did. “I don’t want to.”  
  
“Even a girl like you is capable of being selfish then…”  
  
“I don’t want to give up on love, and you shouldn’t either.”  
  
“It’s not love I gave up on…”  
_It’s myself._ _  
_ _Just let me go._ _  
_ _Throw me away Junko, please._

Maybe he had known from the start.  
He fell in love with someone who could not love him back.  
That was why no matter how much Ryoko clung to him begging her to love him he just couldn’t.  
He never wanted to be loved in the first place.  
It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel affection towards others. It was that he couldn’t feel affection from others. No matter how much Ryoko told him she loved him, no matter how much she said all she needed only him just like he had always, he could only respond with disdain. 

 _Please. Quickly._ _  
_ _Oh, I forgot to say._ _  
_ _I love you._  
They were words that did not fix anything.  
They were words that meant nothing.  
They were feelings that would never reach her.   
And yet he wanted to live until he could say them to her again.  
His mind would certainly not last until then. He had no idea if his heart would. 

“That’s fine isn’t it…?” Medaka asked, looking at him clueless as usual.  
  
“Huh…?” She looked so far away. On the other side of the water. On an island somewhere. The same lonely island Enoshima was on.  
  
“You love Enoshima even though you hate her. Then, can’t you learn to love yourself the way you learned to love her?”  
  
That sounded so hard.  
But, easy love was not for him.


	24. The Empty Box

_ You have everything _ _  
_ _ That I lack. _ _  
_ _ You are everything _ _  
_ _ That I long to become.  _   
  
Izuru always found the day of his birth to be ironic in a way that was not at all humorous.  First of all, while it could be technically argued that he existed (much to his lament), he was never born in the first place. Second, while he had no idea who his past self was he thought they shared feelings in this one aspect.    
  
He was not grateful for being born.   
_ I’m so happy I was born into this world.  _ _  
_ _ I can become somebody because I was born into this world.  _   
He never felt that, not even once, not even in his past lives.    
  
It was a lonely birthday.    
  
There was a birthday cake but the moment Komaeda walked into the room it deflated. Yasuke told Komaeda not to come, but Komaeda came anyway. Izuru the silent observer concluded in his mind that Yasuke wanted Komaeda to come, and therefore tried to shoo him away knowing Komaeda would do the opposite of whatever he was told.   
  
Though it also might have been impossible for Yasuke to say the words  _ I want you there.  _   
Yasuke frequently berated Kamukura and calls him a mute, and acts like his head is empty but that was not the truth at all. Kamukura had so many thoughts he constantly worried that his forehead might crack, and his thoughts would spill out like liquid everywhere.    
  
He regained his awareness of himself, but  he still could not speak. There must have been something else that kept him from talking. He was afraid. Afraid of actively taking part in communicating with others. When the pain of surgeries became too much he secluded himself from everyone because he thought that would make the pain go away, but he had forgotten where he had thrown the key, just like he forgot his original self.   
  
Sometimes Kamukura wonders if butterflies forgot what they looked like as caterpillars. Did they ever desire to go back to their previous stage of life?    
  
A butterfly had wings with which could fly, but those wings also made it the target of humans that envy that beauty. They would be dissected, and placed behind a glass case, with pins and needles stuck into their wings. Nobody would ever dissect a caterpillar and put it on display.    
  
A caterpillar must loathe their own ugliness, while a butterfly loathes it’s beauty. 

  
  
Komaeda and Matsuda. For a year of consecutive surgeries they were the only ones whose faces he saw. He had appointments with other doctors but he did not even look at their faces. Komaeda kept sneaking into Matsuda’s lab using his status as a patient of the neurology department to come see him.    
  
A year after the surgeries began, they decided to throw him a birthday party. Komaeda spent all day cleaning the room even though Yasuke told him he was not invited. Yasuke put the lowest amount of effort possible in buying cake and decorations from the party store. He called this the  _ shittiest birthday party ever  _ with a sardonic smile on his face. Komaeda pulled a party popper and yelled surprise when Kamukura first entered the room, and Kamukura punched him in the stomach by reflex.  _ Komaeda looked very pleased by this development,  _ Kamukura observed with a shiver as Komaeda crumpled to the floor like he was made out of paper.    
  
In the corner of the room, Matsuda was bandaging up Komaeda’s ankle. That was because when he was presenting the flattened birthday cake to Kamukura and singing him happy birthday, Komaeda tripped on nothing at all and threw the cake in Kamukura’s face. He dislocated his ankle.    
  
“Matsuda-kun is so kind!” Komaeda said that so often, his words lathered in sweet honey. A sweetness he could never taste. “He’s gently bandaging my wounds even though he despises me.”    
  
“Shut it idiot. Don’t put words in my mouth. Especially since the only thing that comes out of your mouth is a nonstop stream of crap,” Matsuda said, as he held Komaeda’s foot as daintily as one might hold a glass slipper. “Who said I hated you?” 

 

“I’m not saying you are a bad person for hating me! I just know the way I’ve been acting today is so loathsome I deserve to be despised. “   
  
“I thought you were so insignificant you could not even make a splash in comparison to the talented. So, how could I hate you? I’m not supposed to feel anything at all.”    
  
“Matsuda-kun is really mean when he points out the flaws in my logic like that.”   
  
“Oh, now I’m mean. God can you make up your mind about anything… literally anything ever?” Matsuda said, but his exasperation was mostly faked. “I don’t give a shit about you, just dissecting your weird brain, so it makes sense I’d pick you apart.”    
  
“No, no, you’re wrong. I don’t expect people to care about me to hate me personally. Rather, I think I’m so repugnant that it’s only natural they would hate me, like a bug stuck in the corner of their windshield, or a person with a foul stench.”    
  
“You go on and on and on about this crap, but…”   
  
“Hmmm?”    
  
“I bet if I actually said I hated you, you’d cry like a little bitch, but if I said I didn’t hate you, you’d also cry like a bitch. So, basically you’re a bitch either way.”    
  
“Hmph. Such a foul mouth is unsuited for someone who has such a wondrous talent. Imagine if you were to lose patients because of your terrible bedside manner.”   
  
Matsuda pulled the final bow tight around his ankle. “You can leave anytime you want. It’s not like you give a shit about whether you live or you die. You always put up with my bitching so obviously you must like it, you masochistic freak.” 

 

Kamukura’s brain was stuck to the inside of his skull like chewing gum that’s been stomped on repeatedly. It was a happy scene, and yet tasting that sweetness only brought up a feeling like nausea inside of him. He felt like his entire body was in a pool of crude oil, which explains why his hair was such a shade of pitch black. Oil did not ripple or splash like water did, it sunk into his flesh, stuck to him, stained his body. No matter how much he let himself sink the scenery around him would not change. 

  
Komaeda and Matsuda were just noise, they were laughter and darkness.    
He wants to laugh with them, he wants to call out their names, he wants them to see him, but he can’t be there with them, because Kamukura Izuru is nowhere.    
  
Kamukura wanted to be touched, but every time Yasuke touched him he felt it. He felt Yasuke pressing a knife to his head, and reopening the stitches across his forehead. He felt cold fingers reaching into his skull, clawing into the grey matter of his brain, scratching his from the inside head from the inside. 

 

_ Scraaaaaaape. _ _  
_ _ Scraaaaaaape. _ _  
_ _ Scraaaaaaape.  _   
Kamukura could hear it inside of him, the horrible noise of metal being dragged against bone. He knew he would be scraped again and again until the last one of his cells disappeared.    
  
When he woke up after the surgeries every time without fail, Matsuda would shine a light so bright he could see it on the back of his eyeball and then say. “Do you remember who you are, stupid?” 

  
“I am --”    
Alone.   
He had been alone ever since that day. Since he signed his name on a paper. 

He was at his limit. He was long past his limit. He reached the pain threshold a long time ago. He would feel so much pain that he screamed and begged for death and needed to be chained to his bed, only to suddenly become calm. He got bored of wishing to die. Death by being run over, death by falling, death by electrocution, death by hanging, death by being crushed, death by drowning, death by exsanguination, death by suffocation, he imagined death by every means possible but eventually death bored him.    
  
He got bored of wanting to die, but then he would also get bored of accepting all the pain that came his way without reacting to it, so he pretended to scream about wanting to die again. 

  
How many times is it? How many times is it? How many times had he been cut apart now? How many times did he realize his will amounted to nothing? It’s not that he was in hope or despair over his predicament. He simply reached a dead end.    
  
If only he could completely lose his mind to pain.   
If only he could give up that rationality, and stop being aware.    
The scientists were always trying to erase him from his own body, but little did they know he was the one who wished for that more than anyone else.    
He can’t go mad because he gets bored too quickly of being mad.   
He can’t stay sane because he gets bored too quickly of being sane.    
  
_ This is ridiculous, and yet I can’t laugh.  _ What kind of hell was this? He could neither embrace a faint hope, nor fall into a deep despair. It’s all the same. 

 

_ Bang. Bang. Bang.  _   
He heard something pounding against his skull desperate to be let out. It made all the noises that reached his ears incredibly dull, like faint whispers. He could never be a part of this moment, but he was not gone from it either.    
  
“Reserve-kun, you should tell Matsuda-kun he chose a terrible present for you.”    
  
“Hey, say that to my face.”    
  
“Matsuda-kun’s face is so beautiful. I could never tarnish his face with my dirty words.”   
  
“Shut up. I meant look me in the eye.”   
  
“You’re not being very sensitive to my condition. You know I have difficulty looking people in the eyes, I don’t want to see the reflection of such putrid filth in their eyes.”   
  
  


 

“And yet you have no problem shit talking them when they’re standing right there. What condition is that a symptom of? Besides being a bitch?” The rubix cube Yasuke got him was actually the first one that Kamukura ever played with, Yasuke reassembled the pieces after Kamukura broke it. “-Sides it’s better than not getting him a present at all.”   
  
“I did get him a present! I’m just embarrassed to give it to him when Matsuda-kun is here, because I don’t want him to see how filthy my gift is…”    
  
“I told you to stop hitting on the patient, that’s basically like flirting with a corpse. Pervert. Freak.” 

 

“Should I hit on you instead?” Komaeda batted his eyes, as the corners upturned almost catlike. It was so painfully obvious to Kamukura no matter how much Komaeda claimed to be clueless he secretly thought he was clever. Some of the time. Which is why he said painfully embarrassing lines like that thinking himself shy.    
  
“How about I hit on you. I was thinking about giving you percussive brain surgery with my fist, how about that?” It was also completely obvious to Kamukura that Yasuke was repeating the shallow behavior known as ‘tsundere’.    
  
He knew everything about them. He longed to talk to them more than anything else. Inside his own head he fantasized what kind of things he would say to join in their conversation. Yet, when he tried to take a single step forward he felt a cold hand pulling his nerves away and separating them from his brains like they were strings to play with, and he could not move.    
  
He could not talk to Komaeda and Matsuda, but he could not stop watching them either.    
He hated looking at them because it was a reminder that he was alone.   
He could not close his eyes because he was afraid of the dark.    
  


“Kamukura Izuru.”   
“Reserve-kun.”   
They were spider threads given him by the two in front of him. He slowly pulled himself up.    
  
He was afraid. He would return to his conscious-less state. He would step off the roof, but this time instead of hitting the ground he would keep falling forever. Dying was not the hard part of suicide, it was falling, hitting the ground was over in an instant.    
  
“Kamukura Izuru.”   
“Reserve-kun.”   
“Idiot.”    
“Hope-kun.”   
  
The fog dispelled, and suddenly he returned to them. He wanted to speak with them.  _ What can I do to achieve this? How can I communicate these feelings deep inside me?  _ At any time he might be crushed by the madness called “emptiness’ lying in ambush in the void. But he was not afraid. Because he has those two.    
  
He only wanted to tell them that. He could not think of a single word to convey that. He knew several languages and absorbed the text of thousands of books , but not one word came to him.    
  
Kamukura looked up and noticed Matsuda left the room. Komaeda was alone, standing with his hands behind his back. His ugly faced grinned. “My present for you, reserve-kun…” Komaeda’s feet were quieter than a whisper as he moved across the room. Kamukura felt as if the wind suddenly changed directions, and a cool breeze hit him.   
  
Komaeda embraced him, suddenly, without warning, so clumsy it almost looked like an accident and he had fallen into such an intimate position. Komaeda’s fingers curled around the back of his neck, one by one, it felt like he was pricked by ice cold needles. He hated needles. He did not hate this. A shiver ran through his whole body. Inside of his heart maybe the butterfly had finally been born and left its cocoon, because he suddenly felt fluttering heart beats, like something gentle tickling his heart from within.    
  
No one ever touched him in this way. In his previous life he was sure he never let anybody get this close, because his body did not even remember what it was like to have someone pressed up against him. Komaeda was so lacking in body fat, that Kamukura felt three of his ribs against his skin, and the bottom of his ribcage jabbing into his side. Komaeda’s skin was so rough it was like sandpaper rubbing against his own. Komaeda was so unsure of himself that he physically shook, and their bodies kept knocking against each other.    
  
Komaeda brought his chin to rest on Kamukura’s shoulder, but it was an awkward fit. He stopped for a moment to play with Kamukura’s hair between his fingertips. Kamukura felt something cold pressed against the back of his neck, for a moment he wondered if it was a kiss.    
  
  


The next moment he realized it was a knife. “Reserve-kun, what if all of your suffering amounted to nothing, and you died before you could ever become the world’s hope, imagine how much despair that would create.”   
  
Komaeda was curled around his entire body, like he was naked and being intimately embraced by a snake the only way a snake could hold him, and the tips of his fangs were pressing into the back of his neck.    
  
“It would be such a beautiful tragedy. How many people would be brought to tears and inspired from such a beautiful tragedy?”    
  
Of course what other birthday present would a reaper dressed in all white be able to give him.   
All Kamukura could feel was a small sadness.   
Whether Komaeda really did try to kill him, or was trying to be kind.   
He could not respond to his feelings anyway.   
His hatred or his love, all he could feel was indifference.    
  


Kamukura remained silent, tangled up in death’s loving embrace, counting the bones in Komaeda’s body to pass the time until Matsuda burst through the door.   
  
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?”   
  
Crash.  
Komaeda was thrown to the floor.  
Kamukura thought about how easily someone fragile like that might break.   
  
“Fine, you win Komaeda. I’m officially done with your shit just like you always wanted. There’s a difference between being mentally ill and acting like a fucking psycho.” Matsuda paced restlessly back and forth, he did not have a cigarette but he dug around for one in his pockets anyway. When Komaeda lectured him about smoking, Matsuda yelled at him that it was frustrating idiots like him that drove him to smoke. “Shit. Shit. Even if I get your ass assigned to another doctor, you’re going to come back to this lab anyway because you just… don’t fucking listen…”   
  
“I have a suggestion,” Kamukura spoke up, startling both of them. For a moment Kamukura saw clarity in Komaeda’s eyes, and he wondered if his sharp words drew Komaeda back the same way. “Erase his memories. You were looking for a test subject before you tried it on the girl you love weren’t you? I’ve told you several times your plan will fail but if you insist on continuing…” 

 

Komaeda’s eyes emptied out.   
The fog cleared up, and yet the crystal green clarity to his eyes was somehow more terrifying than the madness that always lurked within them.   
They became clearer.   
Purer.   
As if something was draining out of them.    
  
“N-no, I’ll do anything. Please no…”    
  
“You’ll do anything for hope. You would even kill it. Why?”   
  
“B-because I can’t… I can’t live without you…”   
_  
_ _ Me? _ _  
_ _ Or hope?  _   
  
  


Kamukura got close enough to kiss him, and with his lips said. “Would you die for me, then?” Komaeda looked so beautiful then, like a butterfly caught in the Iintractely woven patterns of a spider web  that glowed in the pale moonlight, slowly giving up and realizing no matter how much it beat its wings it was never going to fly again. 

  
Kamukura recognized that emotion. The despair he could never feel. He could not even feel a false sense of happiness from spending his days peacefully with Yasuke and Komaeda. He almost threw up in delight. He wanted to dance and squash his eyeballs at the same time. All he did was watch silently, as Yasuke dragged Komaeda away.   
  
Komaeda reached out and took his hand,   
And their fingers slowly….   
Pulled   
-Apart.    
  
🦔

 

Kamukura had been staring at the screen the entire time. he just left the hospital after his fight with Matsuda fresh on his mind and looked for a distraction, only to become transfixed. It took him a moment to realize he recovered one of his memories. He lost sense of time for a moment there, or maybe he did not care about the flow of time or where he was for a moment.    
  
In the back of his head he heard a voice.   
He could not tell if it belonged to Kumagawa or Komaeda.    
He hated himself for being so cold he could not recognize the voice of his lover.   
  
『 _ Who do you want me to be? _ 』    
  
“I want to talk to Komaeda. I can’t talk to you. You’re the only person I want to talk to, but I can’t.”    
  


『 _ Liar, you know there are others. _ 』 

  
“No, no, no. I don’t want to talk to them anymore,” He pulled at his hair, and scratched at the sides of his head frantically, quickly making his hair frizz and develop severe split ends. His always flawless hair, became knotted, tangled, frayed. 

 

_ “Fine. I’m Komaeda, there’s no way someone as lowly as myself even has the right to say no to you.”  _   
  
“Shut up about that. I keep telling you to say no when you hate it. I’m not some kind of god, you can deny me all you want.” 

  
  
_ “That’s right. That’s the right thing to say. That’s healthy. But, I’m sick in the head you know? Completely rotten. Besides, you hate it when I deny you, don’t you?”  _

 

Kamukura was staring at one of the monitors outside of the hospital. He left to go look for Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama who still had not been found, but he was sidetracked when he saw.   
  
Him.   
White.   
A fragile existence.   
More delicate than a spider’s web.   
Colder than snow.

More jagged than shards of broken glass.   
More colorless than an illusion.    
Whiter than a skeleton.   
More shapeless than a dream.    
Weightless, like a ghost.    
Floating, swaying,  like a hanging victim.    
Not entirely there, and yet having more presence than anyone else.    
  
“You can’t have that. Nothing here, not a single thing, belongs to you,” Komaeda screamed as he tried to tear Kumagawa’s jacket away from Enoshima Junko. “He was my friend first. Mine.”   
  
The two of them fought over Kumagawa’s jacket, Junko’s claws dug into it, and it began to rip apart at the seams, the threads broke stretched to their limit. 

  
Hinata once thought love was something tender, sweet, and warm, like a pleasant day dream. He realized, that was only a plausible delusion.  _ Loving someone feels just like some sort of violence tearing me into pieces.  _ Just like like that fabric, being ripped apart.    
  
Kamukura only saw love.   
In their desire to monopolize him, to own him.    
To tear him apart with their claws so nobody could have him.   
To dig into his flesh so deeply that it would leave permanent scars.    
That they would lie and tell him was beautiful.    
  
  
Komaeda never once called Hinata  _ mine.  _   
He could not remember now if Komaeda ever told him that he loved him. 

 

_ “I’m filthy aren’t I? I’m talking about how about how much I love another man right in front of you. You can’t possibly love something that’s become so dirtied, anymore.”  _   
  
“Don’t call yourself filthy. I told you to stop calling yourself that.”    
  
_ “That’s just what you’re supposed to say isn’t it? That’s not what I want. Don’t you know how happy it would make me to be hated by you? I could never believe for a single second that you loved me…” _ _  
  
_

“Enough! Enough with the guilt tripping shit-whatever! I tell you all the time, I love you and you never say it back! So why do you constantly get to whine about how no one loves you? Why are you the only one who gets to feel lonely? Why are you the only one who gets to cry?” Kamukura rubbed his teeth against each other making an awful noise, he scowled like he was trying to tear his cheeks apart. “I can’t hate you. I’d do anything for you, but that’s the one thing I can never do.” 

 

_ “You’re such a liar. Why do you lie to me? Is it because you believe someone worthless and talentless like myself couldn’t possibly figure out your lies? That I worship the ground you walk on, so I’ll believe in anything you say without question like some kind of god-” _

 

“I never wanted to be a god, not even once.”    
  
_ “It’s not that you can’t hate me, it’s that you don’t want to. You don’t want to hate. You don’t want to love. Because choosing one always excludes the other.” _ _  
  
_

“What do I want then? Huh? Tell me smartass?”   
  
_ “Everything.” _

 

“Just like you?” 

 

_ “You’re just like me. Haha, what a funny joke.” _

 

“So funny I could die laughing.” 

 

_ “What kind of joke do you expect a reaper to tell? Joking, joking, Hinata-kun. What you really want is to be a corpse.” _

 

“...”   
  
_ “Well, not a corpse per se. A walking corpse. Like a mechanical zombie. Instead of seeing other people as having their insides pulled out like sausage meat but still walking around, that’s how you see yourself instead.”  _   
  
“No,” Hinata seethed.    
  


_ “Matsuda-kun wants to love a corpse and you want to be a corpse, aren’t you two perfect for each other? A match made in heaven, or maybe in hell, whatever it’s not like there’s a difference.” _

 

Kamukura gripped his face and irrationally started to itch at the scars on his forehead that looked like stitches, just underneath his bangs. “It must be Kumagawa’s voice, Komaeda would never say that… or maybe, I don’t know Komaeda, what he says, what his voice sounds like, what he feels… I don’t know anymore…” 

  
Loving someone is like…   
Creating a part of yourself with the softest and thinnest skin.   
Just a simple touch could make his temperature go up.   
If they sink their claws in, they could easily tear him up.   
If they squeeze his hands tightly it could prove fatal.

His overly sensitive skin, Kamukura scratched at it.    
  
Komaeda was like a spiderweb - difficult, intricate in ways that were impossible to comprehend, fragile. There are times it can’t be helped. And that’s because if it stretched too far, it would tear, and he would feel it like a string in his chest being torn apart. Sometimes, Komaeda just snapped on his own, because the wind blew him too hard. Sometimes Kamukura with his own fingers, wanted to tear apart that spiderweb.   
  
At this moment, he felt trapped, completely tied down as if silk had wrapped around all of his limbs. 

 

Komaeda…   
Hinata always wondered.   
Just how was this child able to live?   
Be it joy, or sorrow, or suffering. He lived with feelings which were more complex, and exponentially larger than those of ordinary people, just accumulating it all within himself. He wove it into webs with the most beautiful shapes and patterns, he spun his misery into silk as white as his hair.    
  
Hinata could not even handle a normal life, a normal sense of inferiority, normal emotions.    
He never once thought Komaeda was detached from life, he never saw him as a reaper, or a spectre. He smiled no matter what happened, but he was not free of worries and grief. He had feelings too, the same as anyone else, but unlike ordinary people his heart and emotions were overflowing.    
  
  


  
  


He always wanted to tell him that, but he couldn’t find the words.   
He just couldn’t.    
_ “Liar. Those words don’t exist for you. You don’t want to feel the same way I do, because it’s too painful… Love is too painful so you don’t want to feel it…” _   
No, it’s not that.   
I swear it’s not that.    
I just…   
“I don’t know either. I don’t know how to act like other people do…” 

  
Yasuke was always rude too, but he was just that way because he did not know how to talk otherwise. 

  
“Isn’t that basically everybody here? (LOL?)” Emukae Mukae asked appearing behind him. She had been watching the television with faint interest, before Kamukura put a much more interesting show on right in front of that. “Hey, that’s you isn’t it, Hinata-senpai? This is like a class reunion from the reserve course days?”    
  
Hinata turned around silently. He did not want to talk to this girl. He did not want to talk to anybody else but Komaeda. Even lashing ouat at her seemed worthless because that too would be a form of talking, and would require him to take a step outside of himself. He just wanted to sink further and further inside the black ink well that was him.   
  
He wanted to sulk.   
He wanted to be left alone in silence.   
He wanted to forget for a few blissful moments that other people existed.    
  
“Please stop talking. The way you talk reminds me of someone who annoys me. Annoyance isn’t an interesting emotion, like rage, it’s just a dull itch.”    
  
“You don’t want to talk to me? Is it because I’m not good enough? Is it because I’m inferior to you? Is it because I don’t know how to talk to others? Is it because I’m unpopular? Is it because I’m unlikable? Is it because nobody wants to be my friend? Is it because I have a bad personality? Is it because I’m ugly?”    
  
“...Mm.”    
  
“How can you resist talking to your cute underclassmen? I’ve failed to seduce you with my girlish charms, and my wiles. And don’t forget about my womanly ways…”    
  
“How do you consider yourself cute and ugly at the same time?”   
  
“Well, y’know. I’m like ugly cute, like one of those pugs. It works because I’m a life form lower than a dog.” 

 

What a hollow imitation of Kumagawa, Kamukura thought. “...Was there a point to any of that? This conversation is far more fun for you then it is me.”   
  
“Not really, but life is kind of pointless you know.”   
  
“You’re wasting my time.”   
  
“In the grand scheme of things because nothing is important, all time is wasted-”   
  
“I don’t like you very much.”   
  
“Thank you…” Emukae’s voice shook with sincerity. There was a tear in her eyes. Kamukura wondered how he could shut this girl out, to slam the door in her face so to speak. “Do you really not remember me at all from the Reserve Course? I talked to you a few times.”    
  
It was true a girl like her would be hard to forget.    
He remembered.    
He did not know right from left with the Reserve Course.    
And Emukae was the first one to strike up a conversation with him.   
“Nice to meet you! Is there anything you don’t understand?”    
She was brimming with friendliness. She looked like she was trying to appear normal.    
He sensed there was something behind her smile. He felt something off about her.   
He was horribly irritated, and just a little bit touched. Because, somewhere in that oddly pure and innocent aura of hers, cruel like the way a child would be, echoed a slight resemblance to his only friend Nanami.    
He did remember.    
  
“Well, whatever my old self was so boring it wasn’t even worth remembering.”   
  
Kamukura stayed silent.    
If he told her, her smile might reach her eyes. She might feel real happiness instead of constantly putting on a show trying to convince others and herself she was still happy with all this misery.    
  
She changed so much since then. What made her start imitating Kumagawa? It was like her old self had died, but she had not been reincarnated or reborn as someone else, she just continued on imitating life…    
  
There was nothing in common between the two of them.    
  
“How come you’re so different Hinata-senpai? You were kind of cute back then, you know…” 

 

“...”    
  
“Oh, oh, it’s not me you’re mad at are you? You’re mad at the guy on screen. The guy who looks like Kumagawa-san, right?”   
  
“...”   
  
“To be honest, I’m mad at Kumagawa-san too. He was so important to me, I needed him to keep on living, but it wasn’t the other way around, you know? I hate it. That I’m this horribly broken thing without him that can’t do anything, but he always continues to live even while broken.”    
  
“...”   
  
“He said he would do anything for me, but he wouldn’t die for me. He can go on living without me.” 

 

“...” 

 

“Doesn’t that mean no matter what, he’s always going to love me a little less than I love him?” 

 

Kamukura reached out for the ribbon around her neck, and pulled it off. Her head did not roll off, so he swiftly clamped both of his hands around her neck and broke it. It was strange, strangulation was a personal way to kill someone, but he was completely impersonal. The thoughts of  _ I want to kill her,  _ did not even cross his mind. He just wanted her to be quiet in the quickest way possible. 

 

“If someone clearly insane like you were to be the traitor, that would be a boring twist.” 

 

He let her go, and let her body fall limp to the ground.   
Around the bangle on his wrist, his forbidden action read:  **Cannot kill the traitor, or allow them to die in front of his eyes.**

 

He did not even realize she was dead.  
Until the smell of rotting filled his nostrils.  
Until he felt an overpowering nausea.   
  
Then her hands reached up clamping on the sides of her face, he heard a terrible crack of her neck in several places as she jammed  it back into place. She sat up and tied the ribbon back around her neck.   
  
“I get it, that’s why you changed so much from back then. You died, just like I did, and now you can’t die.”   
  
You’re a corpse but you can’t die.  
You just rot away slowly.  
You feel yourself rotting.   
But you don’t disappear.   
You just become more and more putrid over time.   
  
No.   
  
“You know my beloved Matusda-kun is kind, because he cares about people so much it’s always hurting him. Then he turns around and hurts them. But you’re different, aren't you?”  
  
No, I’m not.  
When I’m reborn I want to be like Matsuda-kun.   
I want to be a kind person like him.   
  
“You don’t even care. It’s like you’re not even there. That’s why even if you kill me, it doesn’t hurt at all.”  
  
No, don’t say that.  
I want to.  
I want to _desperately._  
I want you.  
I’ve always wanted you _desperately._   
  
“Hey, Hinata-senpai. Can you do a favor for your former Kouhai?” 

 

🦔

 

Hinata walked along.   
In the shop windows next to him, like mirrors Komaeda danced along. Hinata reached out his hand, but his fingers went straight through Komaeda’s, and he felt the chill of touching a ghost.    
He was aware that he was losing his mind.   
He was also aware he would probably get bored of seeing things that were not there, soon. 

  
His former self wanted to die.   
He walked to the roof of the school and looked down.   
He was afraid to die, but he stepped off anyway.   
His head hit the concrete and all his brains spilled out.   
Yet, he did not die.   
  
He just woke up in the same body again.    
Yet given a second chance at life all he did was walk back to that roof again.   
As if somebody else was in control of his legs.   
As if he was just a witness to the actions his own body took.   
He stood at the edge of the roof and threw himself off.   
His head smashed. His neck twisted until it broke.    
His body became something so horribly broken    
it was impossible to believe that shape once resembled a human being.   
Yet, he did not die.    
  
He walked off the roof.   
This time he did not die instantaneously.    
His head split half-open, he crawled around.    
It would be nice if he found some hope lying around somewhere.    
But of course there is no such thing.   
Even if there were he would not be able to pick it up.    
He lost blood until he crawled like a caterpillar in his own blood, then he died.    
  


Caterpillars died in order to become butterflies. Their bodies melted and they became a smoothie of bug organs. Kamukura never became a butterfly, he just remained in the cocoon.    
  
A butterfly would eventually regret giving up its life as a caterpillar.   
A caterpillar would eventually regret never being able to be a butterfly.    
The most ideal thing would be to die while still in the cocoon, but he could not die.   
He lived without living.   
He died without dying. 

 

That was his daily life as he was operated on again and again for a whole year. In his brief moments of consciousness before the anesthesia set in, he tried to keep track of the passing time.    
  


_ Cerebrum. Cerebellum and brainstem. Remember this. Remember the feelings of Matsuda-kun splitting your skull in two. Of your brains splitting everywhere. Remember Nanami, the person you’re doing this for. You wanted to show her… you wanted her to look at you. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Where did they cut this time? The four lobes are uhh, front lobes, temporal lobe, occipital lobe and the parietal lobe. Matsuda-kun has to be careful if he cuts my frontal lobe I won’t be able to walk and talk with him anymore.  _ _  
_ _ I lay down on the surgery and let them operate me. _ _  
_ _ I jump. _ _  
_ _ I fall. _ _  
_ _ I spill the insides of my head all over the ground again. _ _  
_ _ The next time I wake up will I be someone else? _

  
  


_  
_ _  
_ _ Language is divided into two areas. The Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Please don’t cut those out, talking to you is the only thing that keeps me sane. Hey, why is this taking so long? Nobody told me getting a talent would be this hard. Is it this hard for everybody? Or, is it because they endured this all of their lives. Because I’m going to get a talent in less than a year, so I have to experience just as much pain. No, wait what kind of logic is that? Why do I have to repeatedly suffer pain? Is any talent really worked this.  _ _  
_ _ It’s fucked up. _ _  
_ _ Hope’s Peak is a fucked up place. _ _  
_ _ I’m going to remember it. I’m going to remember it the next time I wake up. _ _  
_ _ I’m going to scream at all of you how fucked up this all is.  _ _  
_ _  
_ _ I forgot what I was thinking about. Splash. My brain’s broken again. Haha. I retain my memories, but I can’t muster the willpower to stand up. I want to run away but neither my body nor my heart will listen to me. Give me just a grain of hope. I just want to take a single step forward.  _ _  
_ _ This place… is the academy of hope. _ _  
_ _ I just wanted a hope of my own? _ _  
_ _ Why not me?  _ _  
_ _ I don’t want to suffer anymore, but because giving up isn’t an option, they cut open my head again. I started wishing for Matsuda’s knife to slip and slit my throat.  _ _  
_ _  
_ _ The parietal lobe interprets language, words. Matsuda-kun doesn’t talk to me anymore. He just looks at me with a sad expression on his face. He’s the only one that looks at me. But the surgeries continue. _ _  
_ _ I signed my name on that paper. _ _  
_ _ Doesn’t that mean this pain is all self inflicted?  _ _  
_ _  
_ _ After two hundred and fifty three surgeries I stopped counting. People have faces but I no longer see any meaning in their features. The only face I see is Matsuda-kun’s. I killed off my thoughts awhile ago, because they were getting in the way. Only rarely am I able to form any meaningful thoughts like I am right now. And yet, Ithe surgeries continue. I don’t even think about the reason I’m doing all this anymore. I don’t want a talent. I don’t want anything.  _

 

_ What is hope? _ _  
_ _ Crack. _ _  
_ _ They split open my skull again.  _ _  
_ _  
_ _ Corpses.  _ _  
_ _ There’s a pile of me. They’re all my corpses. Each time they cut me open I die.  _ _  
_ _  
_ _ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! _

_ “...............” _ _  
_ _  
_ _ “.................” _

 

_ There’s no one looking at me. _ _  
_ _ No one except Matsuda-kun.  _ _  
  
_

_ There was someone important to me. _ _  
_ _ There was someone I wanted to impress?  _

_ What was her name again? _ _  
_ _ I should ask Matsuda-kun.  _

 

He had all of his organs stripped out of him one by one, and replaced with clockwork. His heart did not beat anymore because he was alive, it ticked because of the gears inside of him turning.    
  


He remembered the feeling of his old self being stripped away. His body was still in its original original shape and there should not have been a problem with his brain, but his intellect started to wither. They performed examinations on him every day and his scores plummeted, as numbers and kanji faded. His consciousness ran away from his body. His willpower was so gone it was like Matsuda took an ice pick to his frontal lobe. He could no longer walk around the limited space of his room even if he wanted to. He lost the power to stand up and frequently spent entire days lying in bed. His memories faded. He started to forget what kind of person he was, what he liked, what he disliked, what he lived for. He forgot how to speak to. He used to be afraid of that, of no longer being able to scream out in pain and beg for it all to stop, but there was nothing he could do. He forgot how to be afraid.    
  
He was  _ disappearing, disappearing, disappearing, disappearing, disappearing, disappearing.  _   
There were no colors, no words, no background. The world was more vague than a dream. He was shackled and sinking to a bottomless swamp. Even though he could not breathe he did not die, he just felt the sensation of muck filling his lungs, he just drowned continuously. He sunk until he no longer knew up or down. He sank somewhere where the word “despair” doesn’t even exist.    
  
He could not see despair, or hope.    
He could not see darkness or light. 

 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.    
  
When they walked him back to his room, Hinata suddenly started to cry so loud that he screamed. There was no trigger. He just thought, this was it. This was the end. Everything he ever tried to do he gave up halfway through, and this was it. Finally, finally.

The doctors just left him there.   
He grabbed the white coat of one and begged them to call for Matsuda, but he did not. He was abandoned there sobbing like a child. He did not know what to do, except lay on the floor and let tears and snot keep falling out of his face.   
  
He heard footsteps, and saw.   
A pair of black loafers.   
A pitch black uniform.    
  
“Kill me! Just kill me already!” He grabbed at those feet. He would lick them like a dog if he had to. All that was left of him was desperation. Once he was desperate to be somebody, and now he was just desperate. “Just kill me! If you’re going to keep putting me through this than just kill me! I can’t take it anymore.” 

 

『Yes, you can.』 The boy without a face spoke. 『Human beings can survive anything, any amount of pain or suffering.』    
  
“That’s a lie. I asked you to help me and you… you’re not doing anything at all. That’s just cruel.”  

 

『It’s not a lie. Lies are much kinder than that.』The boy reached out and brushed a hand through his shaggy brown hair that reached past his shoulder now. Hinata wondered if anyone had ever touched him in such a careful way, like they were afraid at any moment he might break from touch alone. 『Is there a reason you can’t smile right now?』    
  
Hinata said everything, all at once. He had no idea if it was cohesive. He could not see the boy’s face, but something told Hinata he did not really comprehend, and was just pretending he did. “It’s all so pointless…” 

 

『If you can find a reason to suffering it ceases to be suffering you know?』    
  
“...Really?” 

 

『Pfffft. No. That was just bullshit. Philosophers are just professional bullshit artists』 

  
“You’re laughing at me. I knew you were laughing at me. I knew, I knew, I knew, they’re all laughing at me-” 

 

『Hajime-chan, stop dying. Instead of cutting your wrists, cut your overly long hair. Mm, I’m just making this up on the spot but, it’s like you’re staring at a box right? You’re outside the empty box looking in, but no matter how much you look it’s still empty. Then, slowly your start to empty out as well...』 

  
“What do I do?” 

 

『Stop looking inside the box, dumbass.』 

  
“There is no box!”   
  
There was a featureless white room.   
He was sure his heart was painted exactly the same colors. 

  
“I can’t take it anymore.”    
  
『Yes you can.』    
  
“Those are just words.” 

 

『Yeah that’s what people use to communicate dipshit.』 The boy said, smacking him roughly on the head. His ears rung, and his brain bounced around in his skull a little bit. Then suddenly, just as rough as he had been a moment ago he was gentle, pulling him close, stepping over his boundaries like they were nothing, like the boy did not even see them. He whispered an intimate secret only between the two of them. 『Build a cocoon around your heart. Then, your body just becomes a body. It’s not really you that’s suffering, because the real you is buried deep within yourself. No matter how much you’re humiliated it won’t reach you. It’s just a body. It’s just meat, and bone. You’re not the one going through that pain.』 

  
That was how he became nothing more than a caterpillar writhing around in his cocoon, who never wanted to be a butterfly, and never wanted to go back to crawling on his belly either.   
He slowly forgot, what the world outisde looked like, what people’s faces looked like.   
How to laugh.   
How to smile.   
How to cry.    
How to break down.   
The real him would not laugh here.   
The real him would not smile.   
The real him would not cry.   
The real him was never going to break again.    
  


_ “Who was the one who did that to you?”  _

 

“I did.”   
  
_ “Hinata-kun, for someone who has lower self esteem than even me-”  _   
  
“That can’t be true.”    
  
_ “You sure are narcissistic aren’t you?”  _   
  
Kamukura stopped to stare at his reflection. He saw the shapes of people in the distance, but did not pay attention to them. He realized he was not doing a good job of defending himself. 

 

_ “You can’t ever be a victim can you. It’s somehow your fault that they exploited you, because everything in the world ties back to you.” _   
  
“You don’t let yourself be a victim either.”   
  
_ “I’d be your victim, Hinata-kun. You can victimize me as much as you want.”  _

 

“Shut the fuck up! Jeez! How many times do I have to say?”    
  
_ “It’s Matsuda-kun’s fault for cutting you open. He victimized you. He hurt you. He did it for the sake of Enoshima Junko.”  _

 

“I know that already but I…”   
  
_ “You forgive him? Oh, Hinata-kun you’re so kind.” _   
  
“I hate when you say that.”   
  


_ “You don’t believe you’re a kind person, do you? There’s no way you’d bully Medaka who never did anything to you, and then forgive Matsuda who really hurt you. You hate him, don’t you?”  _   
  
“...”   
  
_ “But, if you want to hurt him the most you have to love him. That’s why you always stick around him. Every smile, is a dagger. You know he’s just going to torture himself with guilt when he’s near you, that’s why you never want to leave his side.”  _

 

“No, that’s not what I... “   
  
_ “Isn’t that just spreading despair like Junko does? You’re hurting him with love just like Junko did.” _

 

_ Yasuke. _ _  
_ _ From the moment I saw you, I thought. _ _  
_ _ This is a person who is gifted with talent.  _ _  
_ _ I could never be your friend, unless I had a talent of my own. _ _  
_ _ We were unequal. _ _  
_ _ I could not even step on stage with you.  _ _  
_ _ But when we were together.  _

_ I thought… _ _  
_ _ I’m not lonely. _ _  
_ _ I’m not lonely at all. _ _  
_ _ I don’t forgive you. _ _  
_ _ I don’t forgive myself.  _ _  
_ _ I don’t want to. _ _  
_ _ Damnit, I’m mad aren’t I? _ _  
_ _ Why does Komaeda… why is it always him… _ _  
_ _ Just once, I wish I could say the words.  _

 

_ I didn’t want the pain to stop. _ _  
_ _ I didn’t want to stop feeling. _ _  
_ _ What I wanted was… _ _  
_ _ Just… someone to completely understand how hard and painful it was, wanting to scream and cry but not being able to express it.  _

 

The strings tightened around his heart. He felt so vulnerable, like a butterfly being dissected and put on display. Matsuda cut into that same heart, opened up the four chambers, and then pulled apart the muscle fibers and nerve endings. 

 

He hated.   
He really hated Matsuda. He did blame him. He despised. He wanted him to suffer as he had. He wanted him to be punished.He hated… that he loved him still. 

 

_ “You can’t even hate properly. You can’t even despair properly. You’re the same as ever. Doesn’t it get tiring living such a dead end existence, well I suppose as a reserve course student you’re used to your own mediocrity by now.” _

 

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Hinata said with a voice that dripped satisfaction.    
  
_ “You want to love him and hate him. You want to be the one who punishes him, and then forgives him. Do you know what that makes you? A god.” _ _  
_ _  
_ “...But… if that’s true, we can never, we can never be...”    
  
“ _ If you’re a god then he’s a sinner. If you’re a monster than he’s frankenstein. If you’re a corpse, then he’s in love with a corpse. That’s why…”  _ _  
_ _  
_ “We can never be friends.” 

  
  


🦔

 

Kamukura searched, and searched but he could not find Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko. He was supposed to be able to predict anything, and yet they eluded him. It was frustrating knowing everything, it was just as frustrating not knowing everything.   
  
He would be bored either way, either bored of the world constantly disappointing him, or be bored of disappointing himself. He finally recognized the blurry figures in the distance.   
  
Kurokami Medaka. Nanami Yasuri slept to the side, but Kamukura wondered if she was really sleeping.    
  
Matsuda Yasuke rested his head in her lap. She was comforting him. Kamukura imagined that Yasuke said something horrible to her, and she chose to comfort him anyway. Well, it’s not like she was hurt, but then reached past that pain. She did not feel any pain at all. She did not even understand what he said to her. Therefore, there was no true kindness in her comforting him.   
  
It was an empty gesture. It was just  _ being nice.  _   
She put as little thought into it as a reflex.    
_ I think everyone is special. _ _  
_ _ Everyone is special? Doesn’t that mean nobody is special?  _ _  
_ _ I’m kind to everybody. _ _  
_ _ Doesn’t that just mean you’re not kind to anybody in particular.  _   
  
“Hinata-senpai. I’m sorry for starting a fight with you,” Medaka looked up, noticing him before he said a word. “You’re right, I was being stubborn and I wasn’t listening so…”

 

_ You don’t think you did anything wrong. You’re apologizing because you think you have to. Because it’s the proper thing to do.  _ _  
_ _ You’ve gotten better at pretending to be human.  _   
  
“Can we please work together? I… I really am sorry for whatever I did to make you hate me. I don’t think I did anything, but maybe I didn’t realize. I’m… a little oblivious when it comes to people so I won’t know unless you tell me.” 

 

_ You’re not Komaeda. Don’t say things like he would. _   
  
“I don’t think I’m better than you at all. But umm… I think maybe I wanted to fight with you, because I envied you a little bit too. I wanted your normal life that you threw away so easily…” She gulped as if forcing herself to swallow. He saw it. A spider crawling down her throat. That unpleasant feeling, of thin wiry legs moving down the wet tissue inside of her neck, and then tickling her as it crawled down her spine.    
  
Medaka was a butterfly.   
She had the most colorful wings of all.    
He finally understood why people wanted to dissect butterflies so badly.    
  
“Also, I’m scared… I think something’s wrong with me. Everything looks slower now, and umm even though I know I’m scared, and I’m shaking, I don’t really feel scared.” 

 

Kamukura realized in an instant what had happened. Her red eyes were observing him. Analysis. The same kind Junko had. She copied it the same way he copied it off of Junko. In that fight a moment ago, she must have started to develop it without even realizing it.   
  
How long did Junko last before she got bored of everything?   
How long did he last? Less than a year?    
How long would Medaka last.    
  
“So, please don’t think I thought you were useless or anything like that. I need you. Yasuke-kun told me everybody was alone but… I don’t think anybody can do anything  alone. Hey, um… can you say something? Even I’m noticing this is awkward. Uhm, am I making it more awkward by just talking more? How do you get it to stop? How do you stop the awkward?!” Medaka began to panic getting worked up, and then tilted her head to the side in an odd little way that made him think of Junko. “Why are you making that face? Did you think of a really funny joke.” 

  
“It’s fine, Medaka-chan. I don’t think it’s anything, maybe you’re just being weird.” 

Kamukura lied.   
Kumagawa said lies could not be cruel.   
Kumagawa told such boring lies.   
Kamukura was going to tell an interesting one.    
  
“Oh, I guess I am a weird girl. It’d be nice, you know, to have normal problems for once…” 

“I’m not mad. Getting mad, is really tiring, isn't it? I just wanted to bring Yasuke-kun home.” He walked over to Yasuke and picked him up. Yasuke’s body was so thin, he felt him tremble against his back. “Yasuke-kun, I found you.”   
  


He said in a soft voice as he began to walk back.   
_ I’ll never lose you again.  _   
  
That line came out more possessive than he intended it to.  
He stopped for a moment.  
_Komaeda.  
__I love you.  
__Just saying._  
  
They were words too hard for him to express.   
His fingers were too numb, and did not work right.   
He could not touch.  
It was too bright, he could not see.  
He could not hear his own voice.  
He felt like he could disappear any moment.  
The light was so intense.   
  
_I'm in love._  
Those were the words that kept him together, like a single string he held onto even when he was blind. It was so, so hard to say those words. He knew, he was never, never, going smile and cry like other people did.   
  
_It can't be fixed.  
__But.  
__I don't want it to be._  
  
  
  



	25. A Dream from Somewhen

“Mikan, sit still honey,” Emukae said in a voice as sweet rotten fruit. Which is to say not sweet at all. “If I touch you directly you’ll die and I’ll be killed by my bracelet. I’m all up for a lover’s suicide, but you’re not really my type.”   
  
“W-what? So I’m not good enough to die with you?” Mikan said, fidgeting more. She was just like a child, tell her to be quiet and she got so panicked it only made her louder. Emukae already knew why without even having to ask.    
  
Because there was a time where she tried to make herself as quiet, and small as possible.    
She really did try to listen to the unreasonable demands of everybody around her.    
She tried to suffocate her own needs hoping her heart would shrivel and die in her chest. 

She broke herself piece by tiny little piece and gave the pieces to other people.    
It did not work. It never did. Here she was the result of that, loud, needy,  and in pieces. 

  
It was impossible for Mikan to be a good child now, Emukae thought it was stupid she ever tried to be. She was like some tragic maiden sitting at the edge of a cliff watching the waves break against the shore. She never jumped, but she never went back home either. She just kept sitting there. If she ever did jump, there would be nothing left of her, just the ribbon in her hair that had washed up on shore. Emukae almost wanted to shout at her to jump because it was so boring watching her.  _ Well, it’s not like I’m any better.  _ She softened ever so slightly, not that the other girl would notice.    
  
Mikan was sensitive to other people, but it was almost like she was too sensitive. A whisper sounded like a scream to her, people’s hands were claws, and when others smiled at her she saw white fangs and nothing else. In a way, being around someone who was honest about how terrible she was was a small comfort. 

  
Here she was letting those claws get close enough to tie bandages around the wounds on her arm that had been exposed by Matsuda, and yet she was not being hurt right now. She wondered if she had ever been touched like this before. She was used to sewing up wounds, hers and everybody else’s.    
  
Yet it was awkward.   
She was reluctant.    
Something felt wrong.    
She was supposed to take care of others.    
If she was not the one doing it, she was useless again.    
If people did not need her, they would hurt her.    
  
“So, you don’t want to die with me? Then, then, are you basically telling me to go die alone? Waaaaaaaaaaaaah! I don’t want to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!”    
  
“Wow, your face is really cute when you cry. Is that why people are always bullying you? Now I want to make you cry on purpose. You’re too cute. I’m jealous! Apologize for being cute!”

 

“I’m so soooooorry for being cuuuuute, I’ll try to be uglier.” 

  
“You don’t always have to agree with me and apologize. It would be more fun tormenting you if you argued back.”   
  
“You could at least try to hide your intention to bully me.”    
  
“Hmm, nope. I think your silly little victim act was right. Everybody is out to get you. I can’t resist the urge to bully, because helpless little victims are just so cute when they scream.” 

  
“D-don’t touch me!”    
  
“Hm? Oh, right I guess I shouldn’t touch you without permission,” Emukae said raising her hands in the air.    
  
“No, I mean you’ll die if you do that. How do you keep forgetting about that?”   
  
“...” She fell into silence and stared off into the distance. “It’s because life has no meaning to me.”    
  
“Don’t suddenly go quiet and say something really depressing while you’re still smiling like that!” Mikan snapped at her, and then immediately gasped and covered her mouth. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.” 

  
Emukae immediately deflated disappointment. “We’re never going to get our comedy routine going if you keep apologizing for everything ever. You shouldn’t have to apologize for being yourself you know…”   
  
“That… nobody’s ever…”   
  
“Even if you kill someone you don’t have to apologize!” 

 

“You’ve killed it. The moment is dead. It can never recover. As the only nurse present I’m calling the time of death.”

 

Mikan could not bandage herself because her forbidden action was using her nurse talent. Emukae could not touch Mikan because her hands were forbidden from contact. Which was why at this moment she had the bandages pinched between her fingers like fine silk and was slowly wrapping them around Mikan’s outstretched arm. The two of them had been like this since Matsuda dumped Mikan back at Emukae’s feet. 

“When our hands are so close we can almost feel each other’s warmth, when our fingers almost brush up against each other. I feel this tightening in my chest,” They were perfectly romantic words, for an unromantic situation. Even someone like Mikan with love goggles so tight they cut off the circulation to her brain knew that. “You’re such a klutz you could fall for me at any moment! Knowing the slightest slip could let me die any moment. It’s exciting isn’t it?”

 

“Why would you want the excitement of almost dying?” 

 

“To prove that I’m still alive, of course. Gosh, Mikan you don’t understand people at all do you?”    
  
No that was backwards. She did not understand people, but she understood Emukae, for some reason. So Mikan tried to keep quiet, which did not last for long because Emukae had a habit of making Mikan react no matter what. No part of her shrunk away from others and tried to look small despite how naturally petite her body was.   
  
Sometimes she looked like a doll that had been thrown outside in the rain, and left filled with cracks and her paint chipping, and yet the beauty she had once been was still there in her features just with scars painted over them.    
  
“You really have to stop squirming you cute little earthworm.”   
  
“What’s so cute about earthworms?”   
  
“They’re adorable when they crawl around in the dirt and get themselves filthy just like you. Should I have called you a leech instead, because you’re just a parasite living for the praise of others?”   
  
“You’re just making it woooooorse.” 

 

“Oh, I have an idea! If you can’t keep your hand still I should just stab the center of your hand with one of my knives and pin it down to the ground until I’m finished.” 

  
Mikan knew this was a bad time to fuss, but that just made her fuss harder. Stupid brain, never doing what she wanted it too. She wondered why her father always accused her of looking down on him and thinking she was smarter, when she was aware of the fact that she was just such a big clumsy idiot. 

 

She jerked back in fear, pushed Emukae away with her elbow. Emukae was still holding onto the tangles of bandages and pulled Mikan down with her. Falling on top of her was much less romantic than it was in anime, for one she hit her head hard against Emukae’s ribs instead of landing on her chest. Not… that she was disappointed or anything. For a moment Mikan felt a paralyzing fear of being so close, like she had tripped over some line she was supposed to stay behind.    
Idiot.    
Idiot.    
Idiot. 

  
It felt so wrong, wrong, wrong. She was so sick, sick, sick.   
She was going to infect Emukae getting this close.   
Why couldn’t Emukae see it?    
Why wasn’t she pushing her away? 

  
Because she was so frozen by fear she accidentally rested her head there longer than she should have. Which is why she noticed. At first she thought she heard it, but that was just her own heart loud in her ears. When she realized the shock was so great it was like a needle straight into her own heart. 

_ No heartbeat….  _   
_ Ahhhhhhhhh! I’m really a terrible nurse! I can’t even find a patient’s heartbeat.  _   
  
“Mikan this isn’t a manga. You can’t just fall on someone and grab their boobs, in the real world that’s just plain assault.”    
  
Mikan threw herself off of Emukae, backpedaling as hard as she could. “It really was an accident this time I swear!”

  
Emukae just sat up like nothing had happened. Rather than Mikan who flinched away she looked like she was completely used to having hands all over her. “Well, your scars are hidden now. You can go back to being a big baby about everything.”   
  
“I-I’m not a big baby about everything…” Mikan said, trying and failing to hold back tears. 

 

Mikan gently rubbed her freshly bandaged arm.    
Injuries. Burns. Lacerations. The bandages which held her fragile body together. That was all she was. She could not be made up of beautiful things like other girls.    
She wished she could wear a ribbon as pretty as the one Emukae wore. The only red ribbon she would ever wear is if one of her bandages became soaked all the way through in blood.    
  
“Hm? Am I interrupting something?” The two of them heard gentle, honeyed laughter, but for some reason that sweetness was sickening. Yukizome offered a hand up to Mikan. “Oh? Oh? Oh? Is this young love? It reminds me of myself when I was your age.” 

  
Mikan saw Emukae stop smiling. “Ugh, it’s an adult.”   
  
“Are you a kid?” Mikan looked back.    
  
“Yep, and you’re a baby. That means you have to listen to what I say.”   
  
“You’re supposed to be the minus, how come I always end up losing around you…”    
  
“I told you. You just need to argue back. Come on, try it. Insult me. Laugh in my face.”    
  
“U… Um… Y-you dummy.”    
  
“That is the worst thing you’ve ever said to me. We can’t be friends anymore. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t even want to look at you, it sickens me.”   
  
“I’m so sorry!”    
  
“Apologies won’t work on me this is the end,” Emukae was having so much fun with Mikan she forgot Yukizome was still standing there. “Oh, you. Why don’t you go away already you’re boring.”    
  
Yukizome Chisa held out her hand for Mikan. For a moment, Emukae was jealous, because even if she wanted to she could never take anyone’s hand like that. “Tsumiki-san, let’s go back already.”

 

“Yukizome-sensei I’m…I’m worried about you,” Mikan said. She wondered how long she had waited for a kind hand to appear in front of her and reach out to her, and now she refused to take it.    
  
“You’re worried about me? You’re such a k-” Chisa stopped herself, biting herself on her tongue. If she lied and called Mikan a kind girl, her love story would be over right now. “It’s kind of funny a girl like you worrying about others, isn’t it?” 

 

Did she mean for the truth to come out so scathing? Chisa tilted her head so far to the side the entire world looked off balance. She could not tell a kind lie, but that did not necessarily mean she had to be cruel on purpose. Perhaps she had always been like this and she just hid it.    
  
Tsumiki Mikan was so needy as a student. Chisa understood that like many of the other students in her class, Tsumiki actually needed that special attention but the more she gave it, the more Mikan needed. A cracked vase. The water slowly poured out of her.  _ N-no, don’t think of her that way, she’s just a girl.  _

 

“U-Um… You just wanted to be useful to Munakata-sensei and everybody else in our class right? So I kind of get it…”   
  
“Hmm? Get what sweetie?” 

 

“Why you’re like this now,” Mikan tried to avoid eye contact, because ever since she saw Yukizome refuse to help that sick girl she wanted to look away, otherwise the memories of one of the few people who had ever been kind to her would be ruined. The kind hearted Nanami Chiaki who opened up to all of her classmates, the determined Yukizome Chisa who would never give up on a single one of her students.    
  
If those people were too good to be true, if they were too kind to be real, then part of Mikan wished they had kept lying forever. That Nanami was not a socially awkward weirdo playing at a good girl because she was afraid of other people, that Yukizome was not an adult equally as flawed as the children she was looking after. 

 

“I’m not like anything right now,” Technically not a lie since she did not know the truth.    
  
“The days where you were our teacher were so happy, but were you ever happy?” 

 

“I…” Chisa mouthed the word  _ was,  _ but she was too afraid to say what might be a lie. 

  
“What about your school days with Munakata-sensei and…”   
  
“Don’t ask me that!” Chisa said suddenly, before clamping her mouth shut with both hands. If she found out those days were a lie she could not take it. She spoke uneasily through her criss crossing fingers. “You’re such a cinnaemon roll! Or should I say sinnamon roll? Because even though you always sneak away and disobey your teacher, you’re still so sweet, so pure.”   
  
“I just want to eat her,” Emukae joined in.   
  
“Please don’t! I have no idea if either of you are serious right now!”    
  
“O-oh that’s right. I’m one of the reasons everyone started turning against each other,” It was hard for Mikan to admit she did anything wrong, even when she actually did something wrong. “I… uh… please…” Mikan was always apologizing, always begging for forgiveness but for some reason the words would not come out of her mouth. 

 

“Children are supposed to misbehave. You don’t have to apologize. It’s a teacher’s job to help them even when they’re naughty,” She kept talking in that cutesy and slightly deranged way. “I… I am… I’m supposed to be your teacher.”  _ You’re making her worry about you! You can’t make a bunch of kids suffer for your mistakes! You were the one who was supposed to save them! _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Oh, but they’re already suffering.  _ A different, more condescending voice spoke in Chisa’s head.    
  
“N-no, it’s wrong. There’s something wrong there. You did your best to help everyone right, you wanted to be useful right, so why are you in despair right now?” Mikan embraced herself again. To hold herself in a way she would never be held. “It’s my fault isn’t it because I… I… even though you never did anything wrong.” 

 

“Wow, Mikan you sure love to talk about yourself,” Emukae commented with a snicker.    
  
Chisa’s voice fell quiet. “No honey, it’s not your fault. It’s not Enoshima’s fault either. Nobody ever did anything to me.” There was something drilling into her skull. She felt her own brains churning. All of her finger nails were pulled off one by one. Her feet were nailed to the floor. And yet. “I was just always like this. I was just a two faced liar all along.”   
  
“But you were so kind? You worked so hard?”   
  
“Not for the right reasons. I just wanted to see myself as a good person. I wanted my friends to treat me kindly, so no matter what they did I was always smiling around them, and always the good girl of the group.”   
  
While the boys got to fight.   
While the boys got to scream and argue.   
She stayed quiet.   
  


“If you spend all of your time acting like a kind person, doesn’t that basically just make you kind anyway? Ugh, just because you’re smart you gotta make everything complicated,” Emukae complained. 

 

“It had to be me. If I wasn’t a bad person all along then why… then why did this happen to me? Why did I deserve this?” Her nails. Her feet. Her brains. Swirling around in her skull. It was like she was always spinning around, always nauseous. Chisa took the bag and brought it down hard on Mikan’s head, knocking her to the side. “If it’s not mine then who’s fault is this?” 

 

She watched Mikan crumple to the ground and immediately felt cold.    
When she first met Mikan, she asked Mikan to show her all of her scars.   
She gently traced the outline of those scars.   
And then told swore to herself that she would never become the reason for those scars.    
It was not like she could heal all of them.

She might not even be capable of making Mikan forget them.   
But at least she could never hurt her.   
She could teach Mikan at least one person in the world did not hurt.    
That other people were more than just pain.    
Were here feelings then a lie too?   
Yukizome felt like she was a stranger.    
She had become the fake, in comparison to her real self, the kindhearted teacher Mikan knew.    
She was a shoddy and improper replacement.    
  
“I need you to come back. If you don’t Kyosuke won’t get better,” Chisa said even though she could not use her talent. She grabbed Mikan by that long hair and picked her up, ready to drag her if necessary.    
  
At that moment something sliced through the air in front of her. Chisa felt the hair become loose in her hands. For a moment she feared she had pulled too hard she ripped the hair straight out, even though that was how people used to bully her, even though she had such beautiful hair  _ she almost… _   
  
“Waaaaaaah! Don’t cut my hair, it’s messy enough as it is.”    
  
On the other side of the sword that had cut through the space between them, Pekoyama was now standing and keeping them apart. She wore around her eyes a bright red blindfold. “Hmph. I may be getting used to this blind swordsmen training.”   
  
“Are you shitting me? You almost took her head off,” Fuyuhiko said, not far behind her like always.    
  
“If you want me to get better you could at least praise me when I do well, young master.”

  
“You didn’t decapitate one of your friends while swinging your sword around blind like an idiot because you refuse to just put it down and let me be the one to fight. Whoop dee fucking do.”   
  
“Thank you, young master, your kind words mean everything to me.”   
  
“I was chewing you out and you know it!” Fuyuhiko did not really want to bicker with her like this, but bickering was better than not talking at all. There was a time when he used to be too afarid to speak to anybody, since then he found out if every other word out of his mouth was an insult, or foul, than it made speaking way easier. “Would you quit it with this  _ it was all a lie _ crap already! Why do you all gotta overthink things over and over until your heads are stuck up your ass. You’re just like Peko if you told people what was wrong instead of waiting until it all exploded then you’d save me a headache.”    
  
“Young master, not everybody is as capable of yelling what they feel at the top of their lungs, the moment they feel it.”   
  
“Are you the passive aggressive swordsman? Is that what you are?”    
  
“No, I was praising you. You’re really talented being able to speak your mind. You don’t even think about the feelings of the people listening.”    
  
“Oh, you two are lovebirds too aren’t you? I always noticed in class…”    
  
  


“Fuck N-No we’re not.”   
“Yes we are!”    
  
“Yes we fucking are!”    
“Oh, no, you're mistaken.”   
  
Even though there was no point in hiding it now, those two were just not on the same page about anything. Chisa considered attacking again driving a kitchen knife from her apron, but suddenly she was blocked by a mop. Kirumi appeared as well, like she was an old rival.    
  
“Holy shit are they going to have a sword fight with mops? That’s awesome.”   
  
“No it’s not. A fight with swords is way cooler- I mean more dignified,” Pekoyama said, puffing out her cheeks. 

  
She reached for the medicine bag, but Mikan already wrapped herself around it. Crawling around on the ground, lower than anyone, she tilted her head up and gave a defiant smile.    
  
Tsumiki remembered in the past every time she was beaten like this, she never once defied them even with her eyes. She just submitted hoping it would end.    
She was expressive and overly emotional and yet she was not the type of girl to smile that often.    
The smile on her face resembled Emukae’s more than it did her own.    
A smile that was head over heels in love with misery.   
  
“Ohhhhhh, Sensei. Do you really need that medicine? As long as he stays sick, he’ll stay in that bed needing you by his side to take care of him.”    
  
Yukizome saw temptation. She saw the garden. She saw Kyosuke’s pale body laying amongst the flowers, with only a single fig leaf to hide his shame. His skin reflected the light the same way the moon would on a dark night, he was wrapped in an ethereal glow.   
  
How warm it would be to lay beside him. She was too afraid to touch him. What if her hands left marks on that glossy white skin? What if he was like fresh snow that would melt the moment he felt the warmth of another body? What if his heart was just glass that would just shatter the moment it started to beat too fast? She thought it would be enough to keep him close by, but all of that happiness whittled away until there was nothing left. Nothing but to fulfill her selfish desire. 

  
She could never take his hand like this. Not while she was such a terrible woman. She needed an apple in her hand instead.    
  
Eve took the apple because she wanted to be loved by a man, because being cursed forever with him was better than the possibility that she might lose him.   
No, maybe she took the apple for herself. Maybe she stole the peach for herself.    
What was the difference between Ensohima Junko and herself?   
Despair?   
No, it was control.   
Ensohima Junko controlled everything and everyone around her.    
She even controlled Yukizome herself.   
If only someone could use that power for hope rather than despair.    
If she had controlled her class better none of this would have happened.    
She was such a terrible teacher.   
She bit into the apple, crisp and fresh.    
She thought sin was supposed to taste sweet, or something like that.    
It was the most bitter and unpleasant thing she ever choked down.    
  
Why was coveting immortality such a sin? She thought even though she was so sick of herself she convulsed and needed to vomit. She just wanted those days to last forever.    
  
Yukizome said nothing, she just smiled tossing the medicine bag back to Mikan. As she turned around and left, she told her class to have fun, but not too much fun. Every kid has a rebellious stage. Stay safe. Meaningless things that adults tell children.    
  
Fuyuhiko was the first to deflate because he tried the hardest to stand with his chest puffed out. “Wow, nice moves. You can lie, cheat and steal like the best of them.”    
  
Mikan had no idea if that was a compliment but coming from a criminal it just might be. “It’s no big deal, people always look down on me, and I’m so useless nobody expects anything from me at all so it’s easy to trick them.” Mikan immediately became self conscious after saying that. “Nooo! I tried to brag but in the end I just made myself look more pathetic.”    
  
She took one last fleeting look at Yukizome.  _ She was useful to everyone, but it didn’t make her happy.  _ Mikan felt like something fundamental inside of her should have broke, a screw should have fallen loose at that revelation but instead all she thought was:  _ Well I’ll never be useful to anyone so it’s not like it matters to me.  _

 

🦔

 

When they were all back at the hospital. Fuyuhiko, Kirumi, Pekoyama, Hinata in one room. Medaka and Nanami avoiding the others. Emukae and Mikan talking amongst themselves. Matsuda tied to the bed by Hinata so he did not run away again. Gundham sleeping in his room with Sonia sleeping in the chair next to him.    
  
They were all gathered together, but it’s not like they were all classmates, and they certainly were not all friends. Tsumiki was beginning to doubt if they had ever been a class to begin with. Perhaps they did not want to be together, they just wanted to all idolize the same person. Nanami Chiaki, Yukizome Chisa, Enoshima Junko, and now it was Hinata Hajime. They all tried to protect every single classmate in the past. It was hard to be strong for yourself, Mikan knew that because she was weaker than anybody else, but if you were protecting everyone you had to be strong.    
  


Kirumi finished pouring Fuyuhiko his coffee. She lied and told him it was black, but she actually put cream, marshmallows, and sugar cubes in it to get it sweet enough for his liking. He sat in an armchair, because Kirumi had found one in the middle of the city somehow. 

 

Just as she was about to finish handing the dish to Fuyuhiko, Peko knocked it out of her hands. “Oops, my hand slipped,” Peko said in a perfectly emotionless voice. She had not intended it too, the cup landed on Fuyuhiko’s lap. 

  
“Ahhhh! What the hell! Are you trying to put an end to the Kuzuryuu clan’s future by burning my dick off.” 

  
Pekoyama considered offering to carry the future for the Kuzuryuu for him, but she realized that innuendo would probably go far over his head. “I’m sorry young master, I’ll clean your lap for you.” 

  
“You stay away! You can’t be trusted with my dick anymore.” Fuyuhiko said, “Jeez since when were you such a klutz?”    
  
“Please, I’ve trained my body to be highly precise and controlled in its movements, but I’m only human. I make mistakes sometimes too.”   
  
“Oh, now you’re human when it’s convenient. You couldn’t have that revelation, I dunno, fifteen years ago?” 

 

It sounded like Fuyuhiko was giving her a hard time, and fighting her every step of the way but he was actually trying. If they never talked they were never going to get any closer. Yelling counted as talking, at least that was what he thought. They were arguing like children but as far back as Fuyuhiko could remember, even when they were children Pekoyama never argued back with him no matter how much he raised his voice.    
  
“It’s no problem young master,” Kirumi began and when Pekoyama heard her call him young master, her eyes were sharper than any sword she could hold. “I’ll wash those clothes for you and pour you another cup of coffee.”    
  


  
Pekoyama bumped the table with her hip, causing the pitcher to spill on the ground. “Oh no, I slipped.”    
  
“What the hell? You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you?”    
  
“Everything I do is for your sake. There is no way I could ever intentionally bring harm to the man who has always treated me with kindness,” Pekoyama said, her voice dripping with nobility that was entirely fake. “I’m wearing a blindfold you know.”    
  
“Weren’t you the one who wouldn’t shut up about how she’s going to become a blind swordsman one hour ago?”   
  
“Well this isn’t manga young master. If I’m unable to see my ability is obviously going to be limited.”    
  
Fuyuhiko sighed and turned his attention to Hinata. “You figured out what you’re going to do with the brat yet?”    
  
“That could describe anybody in this room… Jeez,” Hinata said in his usual exasperation. He was almost too much like his usual self, Fuyuhiko started to worry. Even him and Peko were bickering more than they usually did at a stressful time like this, and the world they always lived in was kill or be killed.    
  
“I mean Nanami. The mission said kill Nanami right?” 

  
Hinata’s expression, or rather his complete lack of expression froze on his face. He might have stayed that way if Matsuda did not call out from the bed he was tied to. “Oh my god. Can you not be weird about the fact that girl’s name is Nanami too?”    
  
“Hey, I’m the only normal person in this room.”   
  
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” 

 

For a moment Hinata seriously considered gagging Yasuke.    
  
“If we had not spent so much time in search of Kirumi we might have met up with Hinata-kun earlier,” Pekoyama said behind them. 

  
“Ccch, what is her problem anyway. She’s probably not going to tell me until one of us is about to die.” Fuyuhiko blew off steam and then stood up to take his jacket off. “Let’s have a conversation between men, Hajime.”    
  
“Ummm… so do you want me to go find you someone else to talk to or-”    
  
“Obviously I mean you!” 

 

“We’re not going to have to take our shirts off, start sumoing, and then wrestle skin to skin while slapping each other’s asses are we? I can’t do that, even if it’s just a part of some manliness ritual. I have a boyfriend. Well, I have a boyfriend who does not let me call him his boyfriend. You know like you and Pekoyama are not dating technically but it’s so obvious you’re in love you don’t even deny it anymore. Wait, was I supposed to say that? Did I make things awkward?”   
  
“Shit! You’re hyperventilating! Just breathe!” Fuyuhiko said immediately growing concerned. He took a deep breath instructing Hajime to do the same before he noticed the smell of smoke in the air. “Has anybody here been smoking? I know we’re not minors anymore, but take that outside! You’re being inconsiderate of everyone else, smoking causes hypertension.”    
  
When Hinata finally calmed down Fuyuhiko explained. “I’m gonna drop the petty little bitch act for once and speak straight from the heart.”   
  
“So you’re aware you’re acting that way-” Fuyuhiko ignored Yasuke.    
  
“You sure you’re up for this? You’re probably going to feel bad about killing some kid just so you could survive for another week.” 

 

“Tell that to the student council. Tell that to the reserve students who died because of me. Tell them how I’m too much of a standup guy to kill anybody.”    
  
“I get it you got the whole world on your shoulders. Well, give it a shrug, it’s not like we gave a shit about the world in the first place,” Fuyuhiko leaned in. Of course, Hinata thought, of all the nutjobs gathered in this room the most compassionate and thoughtful one just happened to be the career criminal. “You’re not like me and Peko, you weren’t born into this life.” 

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Because he was a reserve student?   
Because he never did anything to earn his place among them?    
Because he did not even deserve a single friend to stand next to?

 

“Shit. I forgot you were a walking inferiority complex.”    
  
“Like you should be talking short stuff! You’re the kind of guy who would shoot out somebody’s kneecaps just because they were taller than you.”    
  
“Hm. So I’m sure you have the talent of the Ultimate Yakuza, but could you dodge a bullet from point blank range like this?” 

  
  


Hinata immediately changed his tune, “So anyway you wanted to give me advice? I’m so lucky to have a friend like you. Friends forever. We’re blood brothers by Yakuza code now. We’ve been to hell and back together, my good pal.”    
  
“Anyway, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant you still have a choice, but we don’t. All we can do is sink further until all the blood we’ve shed drowns us.”    
  
“Ewe. What a terrible way to die.”   
  
“It’s a fucking metaphor!” Fuyuhiko’s single eye trailed back to the cracked television screen that HInata kept in this room. There were monitors in every room now just in case. Onscreen was Komaeda, getting flowers woven into his hair by some blue haired girl. “You’re not Ultimate Despair, and you’re not her. There’s no reason you’ve got to dirty your hands any farther. Don’t you want to be able to take his hand when you see him again?” 

 

Hinata looked away. Hearing someone else talk about Komaeda awakened some kind of strange feeling inside of him. As if that tiny wisp of a boy was no more than just smoke, that would slip away the moment he reached for it. That only made Hinata want to hold on, even if he had to crush what he was holding onto between his fingers.    
  
“I called myself his friend, but I never did anything to make that kid smile.” Fuyuhiko dug a finger underneath his eyepatch, as if his eyesocket started itching and he needed to scratch until it bled. He held himself back from that much, if only because Peko was right there. “It’s always like this, I always say I’m living just to protect the few people I have left, but then I get so wrapped up in my tiny little problems I don’t do a single thing for them.”    
  
“Is this about your height again?”    
  
“Why do you get worried about your personality changing so much? As far as I can tell you’re still the same immature asshole I met on that island. Seems like you’re going to be stuck with the same god-awful attitude for life.”    
  
They were just joking around like friends should, but Hinata could not leave his body and exist in that moment. It was like he was chained down. He felt an iron cuff around his ankle holding him back. Kuzuryuu was exactly right, he was acting the same way he did on the island, because that was the person Kuzuryuu wanted to talk to.    
  
Yasuke’s words were still inside of him. Was he really Fuyuhiko’s friend? Or did he just want to surround himself with friends? He really, really should have gagged Yasuke. He and Fuyuhiko were getting along normally. The kind of normal that Komaeda wanted to have. The kind of normal he could never have. He was here smiling with friends while Komaeda was all alone. 

“Just use me okay? I’m already going to hell so might as well shoot for one of the cooler circles at this point.”   
  
Fuyuhiko was asking to be used, but you did not use friends.    
They were not pieces on a board.   
Kamukura a moment ago felt chained to his own body, and now desperately he wanted to chain himself down further. Anything to stop from floating away from his own body and seeing everything staring down from above like he was some kind of god.    
  
“Don’t say that…”   
  
“Huh?”    
  
“Don’t say that he’s your friend. There’s no way he’d call you that if I’m not even-”    
  
“I ain’t taking it back. I don’t care if he’s got more screws loose than Kumagawa, he needs friends-”   
  
“I’m the only friend he needs. I’m enough for him.” Hinata did not even snap, he just dropped the energetic way of speaking he usually took around his friends and dropped low into Kamukura’s voice. He went cold, sub-zero levels, the kind of cold at which everything just stopped moving.    
  
“Hey, man you okay?”   
  
Fuyuhiko was just being kind, but Hinata could not accept that kindness. He was drifting away. No, he must have been doing it on purpose at this point. He wanted to be alone. Hinata stood up, his straight black hair falling in front of his face obscuring his eyes. “Behaving like a child is so exhausting. Pardon, I need to be alone with myself.”   
  
With that excuse he left, but Mikan watched him with her eyes as he went. Fuyuhiko and Hinata maybe they were not trying to protect everyone, maybe all they wanted was to be enough for one person. Mikan did not know what that was like, because she already knew no one could accept her. 

 

Fuyuhiko’s hand roughly tore at Hinata’s sleeve before he could leave. “Don’t you remember our promise, Hajime?” 

 

_ I’m not Hajime. I’m not anyone.  _ Hinata wanted to shut him down, but he stopped himself. The promise. When all the members of Ultimate Despair were back together again, when everyone had been saved they would all go to the beach together. They would swim for real this time. It was like a promise from several lifetimes ago. Not a dream from somewhere, but a dream from somewhen. 

 

Hinata pictured it, the sand underneath his feet, feeling it when he curled his toes. He would need to get an umbrella for Komaeda who occasionally was sensitive to the sunlight and got dizzy spells. Komaeda would apologize over and over again for being too afraid to go into the water with Hinata, but Hinata would just sit with him on the beach. That boy’s luck would find several crabs, sea shells, and probably a golden watch that somebody dropped and keep them entertained the whole time.    
  
He wanted to take Komaeda there, just a normal day at the beach, no killing games, or murders, he promised. Their whole class would go together. 

 

Except that was impossible now. 

 

His dream broke apart before his eyes. He fell into the water and drowned, the last thing he saw was the bubbles made from his desperate struggle. There was no way he could keep that promise, the Ultimate Imposter was already dead.    
  
He was going to fail all of them one by one, and when they were all taken away from him. The only people in the world he found interesting. The people who made the painful boredom of the  world worth enduring just a little bit longer by existing. Then Komaeda would be all he had left, until Komaeda died too. If not in this game, then something else would take him away eventually.   
  
The future that Hinata decided to live for turned into a black expanse in front of him, a void that only swallowed things up. 

  
  


🦔

 

“You’re a fool you know that?” 

 

“So you’ve told me in at least twelve different ways. You’re really creative with your insults, it makes you fun to talk to Nanami.”    
  
Nanami sighed at Medaka. “That optimism was so forced even I felt pained by it, and I’m too busy being in pain every waking second to care about other’s pain.”    
  
“Does that mean I’m special to you?”   
  
“You’re a special case of idiocy. My, my, I really need to invent a word to describe you.”    
  
“Stupifabulous?”

  
  
“Don’t help me insult you!” Nanami snapped at her again, before letting out a puff of air. “You’ll ruin all the fun.”    
  
“You could just be nice?”    
  
“That sounds absolutely dreadful.”    
  
“I know everybody says I’m being weird but I’m really just trying to keep smiling even at a time like this,” Medaka wondered if some part of her actually missed her pedestal. As lonely as it was maybe she liked being isolated from others, because they could never reach her, they could never hurt her. The happiness of the time she spent together with Zenkichi became too painful for her to bear now that she was separated from him. “No matter how hard I try, Yasuke and Kamukura won’t get along with me. I can’t do anything for you. Isn’t trying to go on when it’s hopeless… what everybody else does?”    
  
“You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t know about other people. I’m a selfish little girl who thinks she’s the most important person in the world, and her pain is the only one that matters.”    
  
“Don’t think of yourself that way!”    
  
“You really do need to learn sarcasm, otherwise it’s going to make these conversations impossible.” 

 

“Ah, that’s right you’ve been talking to me this whole time haven’t you? You don’t think I’m better or worse than anyone.”   
  
“I mean I’m coughing up blood but yes let’s make this about your self esteem issues.” Nanami said as she hid another cough in her sleeve.    
  
“I really do want to help you. Not because I want to be a hero, but because you’re Nanami, my friend who always insults me every time we talk, talks circles around me, and only smiles to be creepy.”   
  
“What a flattering image you’ve painted of me.” Nanami said, her eyes as dead looking as usual.    
  
“I wish I could be the one suffering that sickness instead.” 

 

“Then you’d be reduced to the one coughing and writhing in pain, and I’d leave you here to die. Don’t be foolish, nothing good comes from wishing the pain of others on yourself.”    
  
“B-but I… It’s not fair that I was born with this healthy body and I haven’t suffered nearly as much as you have in life.” 

 

Nanami raised a hand, and flicked Medaka on the forehead harshly. Despite the fact that her figners were so small and thin like a lady’s, it actually hurt. “I should really crack your skull open to get such foolish doddering thoughts out of your head already. You want to be a normal girl so badly then listen to me.”   
  
“Huh?”   
  
“The tall one and the one that looks like a skeleton-”    
  
“HInata and Yasuke-”   
  
“Don’t care. They may be capable of being kind, but they’re also selfish and every time things get slightly hard for them they’re going to use you over and over again. I know you feel like you have to suffer through that because you’ve had a happier life than both of them, but them taking their pain out on you won’t make them feel any better.”   
  
“But-”   
  
“Shush. Listen. You keep saying over and over, it would be better if you were the one suffering instead but that does not change a single thing. All you’re doing is giving them an excuse to look away from themselves over and over again.”   
  
“But I can handle it really!”   
  
“No you can’t. If you’re a normal girl then you’ll break. Betrayal after betrayal will pile up. You’ll lose your ability to trust anybody. That’s the only result of letting other people use you like this over and over.”    
  
“Then you care if I die?” 

 

“You really are desperate for some small sign of affection, aren't you? I really worry about how your parents raised you.” Nanami hid her hands in the sleeve of her robes, as if she did not want anyone seeing or touching them. “You have the chance to be petty, to be selfish, to be weak, to break into pieces… ah, I’m almost jealous.” 

 

Medaka was surprised she had seen Nanami, someone so aloof to the world, like she was still locked away in that little hospital room so far away speak so directly to her. That was it, that was what she missed the most. There used to be a person who was always by her side, who complained the entire time, who always told her when she was wrong.   
  
She lost her friend. Everyone else here had missing parts, even Medaka realized there were a lot of unstable people concentrated in this group. Medaka was finally missing something too. He was the only one she was ever herself around. 

As she thought of that a blonde cat walked by her, one of Gundham’s. A few of his animals had just been crawling around the hospital with no one left to tame or feed them. Nanami reached forward, only for the cat to suddenly hiss and bite at her hand, sinking its teeth all the way in. Nanami barely looked like she noticed. “Hm. Animals still don’t like me it seems. Well it’s not like I like them much either.”

 

_ How could such a frail girl not feel any pain?  _ Medaka thought as she scared the cat away just by looking at it.    
  
“You should get some sleep. We’re not on the streets anymore.” 

  
“There’s no way I could sleep when you-”   
  
“I’ve been sick my whole life. I’ll still be sick when you wake up. Nothing will change.”    
  
“You’re kind of encouraging. You know in a really depressing way!”   
  
Nanami sighed. “Here I was trying to destroy the last bit of hope in you until you were nothing but an empty shell, it seems like I’ve made a mistake. Perhaps you’re just too stupid to fall into despair properly.” That sounded like something Junko could say, but Medaka’s eyes were too heavy before she could say anything at all. The drug induced sleep they were forced to endure every morning hardly felt like sleeping at all. 

 

Just before she nodded off she saw on one of the many screens, Junko and Zenkichi were getting into a fight. Zenkichi aggressively was trying to drag her out of her room. “You haven’t eaten in almost a week! I don’t care if you see yourself as some untouchable goddess-”   
  
“An untouchable voluptuous goddess of beauty with perfect boob to ass ratio, don’t forget to fall at my feet in worship as an unworthy ugly commoner.”    
  
“Yeah. Don’t care. Anyway, you’re just going to starve to death at this rate. You’re still a normal girl!” 

 

_ You’re a normal girl.  _ Those were the words that Zenkichi were supposed to say to her. Those words only belonged to her. As she tried to shut her eyes tightly and shut everything out, she kept hearing those words in Zenkichi’s voice, over and over again, like a madness mantra that lulled her to sleep.    
  
“Tch. You always lecture me in class and here you are sleeping at a time like this?” Zenkichi’s voice suddenly spoke up in front of her.    
  
  


 

She opened her eyes suddenly, wiping away the blurry tears. Before she could get a good look at him, Zenkichi smacked her hard in the head. “What are you doing you airhead? Falling asleep around people like that? Do you want me to die of a heart attack worrying over you? You have every talent right, so why don’t you have Ultimate Common Sense already?” 

 

Zenkichi usually tended to just run his mouth like that and say whatever he felt around her. Medaka never really listened, thinking he was just blowing off steam. This time though she noticed how much concern for her was in that griping. Was that why he always complained so much around her… because she made him worry? 

 

Zenkichi was right, she was a genius so she should have figured this out a long time ago. She just did not try to think about him. His feelings. The time they spent together. The fact that he loved her. Those precious things she never wanted to let go of now.    
  
Medaka suddenly became uncharacteristically flustered. She thought she had loved Zenkichi her whole life, he was the only one she wanted to always be by her side, but never had the thought of being next to him, being scolded by him turn red like this. Never did she worry so much about what he thought of her. She was overflowing with love, and yet she was like an inexperienced child when it came to feeling it. “I um… I’m sorry.”   
  
“Hm? My Medaka is apologizing for giving me a hard time? Now you’re really worrying me, something must have broken in your head.”   
  
Medaka blinked, hoping she could blink the tears away. “Wait, you’re here! You’re really here.”    
  
“Of course I am. Where the hell else would I be? I’d never give up on escaping that game until I made it back to your side again.”   
  
“You sound like such a knight. Even though all you do is gripe and complain about what a hassle everything is.”   
  
“Hey! Why don’t we try switching roles for once? I’ll be amazing, beautiful, talented and then whine about how hard it is being rich enough to buy the whole world, and you can be the one with the normal body who gets dragged along. My bones are creaking you know! I’m pretty sure all of this running after you is going to give me arthritis, and an ulcer 40 years early.”    
  
“Hehehehe. Zenkichi is so mature that he ends up sounding like an old man.”   
  
“Don’t make fun of me! At least I’m trying to grow into a man for your sake. Everyone always treated you like you were some kind of mini adult, but you were always the immature one. You threw temper tantrums and pouted the second things did not go your way.”    
  
“I do not pout.”   
“She said, pouting.”   
  
Medaka had no idea someone she loved so much could be so infuriating. Ah, but this frustration, this unique feeling in her chest like she was so wound up tight she was going to burst any moment now.    
  
“Zenkichi. You shouldn’t be here, it’s dangerous. I don’t need you to protect me I... “ She liked him for who he was, she liked the weak little boy who had always been by her side not the strong one she pretended to be, but she had no idea how to say that.    
  
“I know, so let’s run.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“Let’s just run from this game. How do you think I got here? There’s a secret passageway out. You don’t have to save everyone Medaka, just for once can’t you let me save you? Your family, your responsibilities, let me take you away from all of that.”   
  
“I can’t…”   
  
“So what if you’ve lost your dream of saving everyone? I’ll give you a new dream. Let’s go out into the countryside and live a life so quiet and normal, let’s have a bunch of kids, and by the time we’re old let’s go  _ Wow, what a boring life, but it wasn’t so bad  _ as we pass away together.”    
  
Zenkichi did not need to become an amazing person for her. She never wanted him to be. She wanted him. The words he said right now, that she had a choice, that she did not need to be a Kurokami, or anything, that she could just be his.   
  
That she could leave her life behind and live her life any way she wanted to be.    
How long had she been waiting to hear those words?    
That boy did not need to cut her chains lose, or defeat some enemy to save her.    
All he needed was to say those words and extend his hand towards her.    
  
Medaka’s eyes slowly opened.   
Of course. The real Zenkichi was not here.   
The person who was always there by her side, all she could do was dream of him now.    
  
  



	26. A Billion Maladies

When Pekoyama went looking for Medaka, she found her instead. Dressed in a white kimono, as if prepared to take her own life. 

 

Pekoyama swallowed - her breath.  
At the sight of Nanami.  
To Pekoyama.

She looked like - a corpse.  
No, not even cadaver, or carrion could describe her. She was just a thing.  
She could not even be disqualified from humanity.

She looked never human to begin with.  
She was not alive now, and she was never alive.  
Her small frame, her skin so pale it looked transluscent, for a moment Pekoyama thought she could see veins underneath that skin as if her whole body was covered in spiderwebs.  
A dangerous kind of beauty.  
One that invited you close and told you to kept your distance at the same time.  
Black widow beautiful.  
Pekoyama immediately closed her eyes and felt ashamed for thinking that way of a sick girl.  
Just breathing seemed to rack her body with pain, and she trembled with each breath. 

 _Cough, Cough, Cough._  
She really was ill.  
Yet, Pekoyama knew she would most likely be ordered to kill that girl soon.  
_Don’t think at all._  
Her sword would cut through those spider webs, and make spider lilies bloom.  
Those flowers that were so red that they were rotten.  
The same noxious color as her eyes. 

_If you think you’ll hesitate._

 

Pekoyama thought she was concealing her presence, but Nanami’s eyes caught her before she could even announce herself. Nanami’s eyes were always covered in a delirious fog, it was painfully obvious she was feverish even now yet for a moment Pekoyama thought she caught a glimpse of an inhuman light behind that fog.  
  
“This little girl is sleeping. You are being far too loud, it’s disrepectful” Nanami said bowing her head. She looked even more feeble with her head lowered like that, Pekoyama almost wanted to tell her to stop. 

 

“You heard me? I was standing still.”  
  
“It’s been a long time since I heard that one,” Nanami angled her head, she was so small and sharp she was all angles, “As long as you’re alive, how could you ever be perfectly still or perfectly quiet? If you’re standing there, you’re standing there.” 

  
“It’s fine, Nanami,” Medaka said slowly waking up. “Besides, between us you’re obviously the little girl.” 

 

“Oh, you learned how to jape. I wonder how long it will take a genius like you to make them humorous,” She reached up and pinched Medaka in the cheek as if scolding a younger sibling, “I keep telling you I am older than you. In fact why don’t you call me Nana-nii from now on, it’s cute and fun.” As she said the words _cute and fun_ her aura became terrifying. 

“You’re really sensitive about your height aren’t you?” 

 

“No, a proper woman should be dainty, frail and weak like me. The moment you see me you want to protect me. If only snakes were so cute, they would do a better job of seduction.” 

 

“She is! She’s really sensitive! I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”  
  
“You can’t hurt what I do not have.” 

 

Pekoyama almost felt bad getting in the middle of their bickering. “Kurokami-san. I want to practice sword fighting blind. You’re the only one here I can spar with without fear of harming them.” Hinata was too stressed right now to help her.  
  
“Hmm. What about that maid she seems pretty competent at handling swords?”  
  
**“You’re the only one here I can spar with, without fear of harming them.”**  
Pekoyama repeated a second time.  
For emphasis.  
  
Clang.  
Clang.  
Clang.  
  
Nanami watched idly like a child watching anime as in front of her, two schoolgirls fought with katanas in front of her. There were no practice swords to use so all they could do was practice with the two real swords they had looted from the various _lootboxes_ they encountered in the last week. 

 

Sparks flew.  
Pekoyama fought at her absolute hardest.  
Even though it was practice she was swinging with intent to kill.  
Nanami saw strings in the air that Pekoyama was trying to weave through.

As if all of this was just a deadly and precise performance.  
She tried to cut the puppet strings moving Medaka around.  
Medaka imitated her sword fighting so well, it was like she was fighting a mirror image of herself. The images of the two overlapped like they were two halves of the same hole.  
For a moment Medaka even seemed to disappear and become a second Pekoyama.  
She was for both girls their hearts were pumping blood through their veins so fast it might as well have been slicked with oil.  
At any moment with the sparks that flew from their swods.  
Both girls looked like they could ignite just from touching.  


Nanami just yawned. Blood flowed through her veins as sluggish, her organs churned inside of her as if they were slowly boiling and rotting away into soup. 

She looked unimpressed, at the entire world, maybe.  
  
The match ended when Medaka knocked Pekoyama’s sword out of her hands. Medaka had told her to seriously come at her like she wanted to kill her, and yet she had not even drawn a single drop of blood.  
  
Pekoyama reluctantly untied the scarlet ribbon tied over her eyes of the same color.  
  
Medaka tapped her forehead thoughtfully, “I’ve figured out the problem. It’s because you can’t see anything, that’s why you can’t fight good.” Medaka laughed haughtily like she had finally gotten the chance to demonstrate her genius.  
  
“Even I thought that was rude,” Nanami’s voice slithered up from where she was watching.  
  
“What? I wasn’t trying to be rude!” 

  
Pekoyama picked her sword up, and kept her eyes low, docile like she always was. “It’s no problem, I know you meant well. If you could give me some more helpful advice I would be most humbled.” 

 

Nanami saw underneath that personality like tranquil water, there were eyes, like a sheathed sword waiting to be drawn, concealing.  When Medaka did not notice she laughed under her breath, but that laughter just sounded like coughing.

 

“No need to be so formal you’re my senpai after all. Actually, I’d feel bad for lecturing my senpai so… Uh…you know…” Medaka began waving her hands frantically in the air as if grasping for the words. “You just need to swing the sword… better.”  
  
“My, my, you are an awful child,” Nanami scoffed at her.  
  
“It’s fine. I’m used to being looked down on, it’s natural when you’re as servile as I am. I was born to be beneath others.”

 

 _I was born to be of use to others._ Medaka was starting to despise those words. Medaka grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her thin framed body, causing ripples in the tranquil pond that was Pekoyama. “No, don’t talk like that so easily. You’re just like Enoshima’s sister everything you say sounds so depressing but you don’t look sad about it at all.” 

 

Medaka looked to be on the brink of tears again, but Pekoyama just blinked. She wondered when she spoke of herself as some lowly thing, did she hurt Fuyuhiko? She was always hurting him, the only person she wanted to protect. “...Useless.”  
  
“You’re not useless. I wanted to ask you for advice as my senpai.” 

 

Pekoyama and Medaka sat next to each other with Nanami off to the side. Medaka told her everything, the flowers they played in together when they were young, how they used to chase each other around and play tag, Zenkichi sneaking in her house to be with her, a hand she was torn away from.

  
A lifelong childhood friend.  
She was sure her life did not begin until she met Zenkichi. 

 _He’s the one who made me, me._  
She found the person she wanted to live for, and just as she realized those feelings, gone.  
He was snatched away.

  
Medaka also told her several unnecessary details like how they bathed together when they were younger, and how she lost her first kiss to Zenkichi and everybody else in her first year primary school class until Zenkichi explained that was something she could only do with her lover. How she thought her feelings for him were one sided for all these years because he rejected their marriage proposal when they were two years old. How she once had a naughty dream about holding his hand in public where everyone could see them.  
  
Pekoyama realized that Medaka was just like Hinata, the type to ramble off whatever came to mind when they were nervous. “Two people are always by each other’s side their entire lives, but they can’t be together. What a sad story.”  
  
Tools were not allowed to cry. They would rust. If she could have, she wanted to in that moment.  
  
Pekoyama relaxed. She leaned back finally letting the tension in her shoulders go as if the wind had suddenly changed direction, and it brought with it the scent of flowers filling her up. She could see the garden that Medaka described, because her and Fuyuhiko had been there once as well. 

 

“If it’s my story I don’t want it to be sad. I want it to be so happy, that everybody puts it down and says it’s too boring, not much of a story at all,” Medaka said stubbornly.  
  
“You already know my parents abandoned me, right? Of all places they put me on the doorstep of a Yakuza hideout. No, it’s possible they might have just sold me to clear up some debts. It was a rotten life, I was only every treated as a tool, I ceased to be a child because they put a sword in my hand… but.”

 

“But?” Medaka mirrored, curious.

“I wouldn’t choose any other life. It’s the path that led me to Fuyuhiko. That misery is what allowed me to meet him.”  
  
“That’s not true you shouldn’t say things like that. Like _it doesn’t matter if I was abused because it made me into the person I was._ You’re getting all depressing again, senpai.”  
  
“I guess that’s true. You know, the young master has tried to get rid of me several times. He told me he would use his family’s resources to help me flee the country and live a more peaceful life. But, no matter how hard I try I can’t curse my lot in life.”  
  
“But you’ll die if you continue down the path you’re on. You’ll die, senpai.”  
  
“You know I’ve killed people, right?”  
  
Medaka did not answer.  
  
Pekoyama, silent and still, “What a fatal kindness. It must be some kind of sickness.” Just like the young master. “It’s not like I was happy I was abandoned, it’s more like I found happiness even in a life as miserable as this one.”  
  
Pekoyama smiled, and Medaka could not help but think of Kumagawa as she saw that empty smile. She raised her bangle up. “I’m sure the game master was mocking us, when they gave young master the command to always stay by my side. It’s like a taunt, _no matter how close you are you’ll never understand each other, you’ll just make each other miserable all over again._ ”  
  
“Th-that. That’s way too cruel. I need to punch that game master when this is all over.”  
  
“Who cares if we make each other miserable? Who cares if we never understand each other. Isn’t it enough just to be by that person’s side? If Hitoyoshi-kun were to die, would you go so far as to regret ever meeting him?”  
  
“N-no, I would never… I wouldn’t even be alive if I…”  
  
“Then, stop worrying so much. You don’t need to understand everything, all you need is a desire to be by that person’s side. That desire is what makes me… not a tool anymore.” Pekoyama said as she brought her fingers to her chest, pulling on the fabric.  
  
“Besides these two boys I know…”  
  
Her voice drifted off. 

 

  
  
“These two boys I know they’re always fighting. I get the sense that even if they had been childhood friends, their relationship now would be exactly the same, and they’d misunderstand each other just as much.”  
  
Her voice drifted off to carefree days of school spent with her two friends, one dark haired, and one like white cotton. There was an old saying that people could choke on cotton balls. The boy looked like the embodiment of that saying.  
  
Back in those days she almost forgot that she was a tool, that she was someone who killed others. Almost. She could only ever almost forget.  
  
“You two love so much, so deeply, it looks like it’s killing you. When I see such pure hearted love from a maiden, I want to say: Go die.” 

  
“Nanami you’re as pleasant as ever,” Medaka said looking back to her with a teasing smile.  
  
“I am as pleasant as freshly bloomed flowers as a spring morning.” Nanami’s expressionless face twitched slightly, “If you keep sharpening that dull wit of yours, then maybe in one thousand years you’ll be capable of saying something cutting.” 

 

“Quit turning your nose up at me. You have someone you care about too.”  
  
“Why would you remind me of such an unpleasant fact.” In the background of their conversation a hijacked television screen was playing a live broadcast, the sanest members of their group already learned to tune it out. On that screen, Amami Rantaro was having a pleasant conversation with Shinguuji Korekiyo, putting a hand on the touch-starved boy’s shoulder to encourage him. “My brother is simply too much of a dullard to hate.” 

 

“I had someone I could call a sister once. If I married the young master, she would be called his sister in law.”  
  
“You’re an ambitious woman,” Medaka said. 

“So aggressive,” Nanami nodded along.  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that!” Pekoyama’s cool cracked. “It’s not like I’ve been planning to marry him all my life.” She totally was. Even Medaka who could not see through lies could see that.  
  
“Let me tell you how much of a fool that boy was. When he was picked to be the head of the family he told me, _don’t be sad about it. That means I’m going to be your older brother who spoils you from now on._ _It doesn’t matter if mom and dad don’t acknowledge you as family, I won’t be anything but your brother for the rest of my life._ ” Nanami traced her finger down the slender indent of her rib cage in the opening of her kimono, as if she was searching for some small trace of life within her. “I’m even more foolish by being touched by those words.” 

🦔

 

Gundham lay in his hospital bed. He looked like a snake chopped into pieces, unable to die. He still wriggled, writhed, with life. Sonia was at his side. She tried to hold his hand, but every time she reached out for it, he clawed at her, violently, like he was some kind of cornered animal.  
  
Sonia stared at the claw marks on the back of her hand, and yet she looked like she felt no pain at all. Perhaps she was happy to be hurt, every scar left on her, was a tear in the perfect princess she was meant to be.  
  
Hinata stood over him. The green jacket that usually hung over his shoulders was off, and to the side and he wore a white coat over his usual suit just in case. He reached forward and lightly applied medicine to wake Gundham up from the sleep they were keeping him in. That was all they could do while they were working to fight the infection in his wound with what limited supplies they had, to keep the pain at bay.  
  
“Tanaka wake up.”  
  
“Mmm, I must slumber for one thousand more years. A being as foul as myself can only wake up on the eclipse when all the planets are aligned and a hole is torn in the astral realm.”  
  
“How do you do this even when you’re half asleep? Is your brain just on autopilot?” Kamukura said, twitching with annoyance. “Your uhh… dark master is calling you to wake.”  
  
“Are you using the forbidden chant?”  
  
“Um yeah… It’s totally the forbidden one. The really really bad one,” He had the talents of the Ultimate Storyteller but somehow that apparently made him worse at this. He could not write the kind of schlock that Gundham came up with all on his own.  
  
“Then, I wake. Now quickly, before the beast inside of me must slumber again.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing inside your head. I could shine a flashlight in one ear and see it shine out the other,” Hinata said, biting his lips to stop himself from snapping at him anymore. “Listen, this medicine is Kimura Seiko’s. It will give your body the strength to move around again without pain, but it’s highly addictive. The pain will probably get worse when we run out of medicine, so I’m not administering this stuff without your say so.” 

  
In response to all of that, Gundham Tanaka simply laughed. He crossed his arms and engaged in a dark chuckling that probably made the underworld rumble or something, until it became too much for him and he gripped his stomach and began to cough. “Cough, cough, cough,keeeeeh” he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, “Foolish! You should already know that poison runs through my veins. I imbibe it so much I’ve become addicted to it, I can’t live without it, a little more poison hardly makes a difference.” 

 

After giving him the medicine and redoing the bandages around his wounds, Gundham was able to sit up for the first time in four days. He pushed himself further and was able to stand on his own, even though it was shaky.  A snake that had been in bed with him climbed up his outstretched arm and wrapped around his neck.  
  
“Who the hell let a snake lay there in a hospital bed, that’s dangerous…” Hinata felt the need to say something.  
  
Sonia threw her arms around him the moment he was awake. She was careful not to touch any part of him that was not covered in cloth or bandages. It was far from a happy reunion or a romantic embrace, every muscle in Tanaka’s body stiffened at once as if he were a wary animal. “Ah, I see she-cat. You mean to hold me so tight as to crush all my ribs. You’re a ruthless woman as always.” 

 

“Enough of that please. Let me just hold onto you for a moment. I’m so happy so why… why aren’t you…?” 

 

“Don’t ask such foolish questions,” Gundham made a face like he wanted to skulk off and hide in some dark corner. It was better when he was laying in bed. Then he would not have to hurt her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her back and hold her, but that would be the same as plunging a dagger in, so he let them hang at his sides uselessly. “You know when I jumped in front of that bullet I was trying to die. I’m not going to thank either of you for saving my life, all you did was defy my wishes.” 

 

“Why would you want to…?”  
  
“Don’t play innocent she-cat. As the man who stole your innocence away, I know of all people you can’t be that way ever again.”  
  
“God, can you guys pick a better way to flirt instead of acting out your melodramatic stage play right in front of me?” Hinata complained behind them, as he refused to leave the room.  
  
Gundham looked at Sonia’s face as he pushed her away. Whatever pain he felt, he knew he was hurting her worse. Fine, he would say it as plainly as possible. If he stopped pretending, hopefully, she would realize the kind of man he was.  
  
“I want to be happy, you waited for me all this time, but more than that I want to die.” 

  
“Wha…?” 

 

“Don’t worry. I would never die in front of her. The thought of her shedding tears over someone as unworthy as me is too much, I will find somewhere quiet to-”  
  
“Shut up already!” Hinata said, punching Gundham right in the stomach. A terrible way to treat someone with a bullet wound. “Stop running your stupid chuuni mouth in front of her. I don’t give a shit about what you feel, you’re not allowed to die on me.”

 

 _I want to die. I want to die more than ever before._ There was no chance of recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating of poison lacquered onto his skin to paint him in his shame.  
  
The fantasy of  princesses in towers, and climbing thorny vines, of saving her heart from a maze of thornws even if his whole arm because scratched up and raw, was not something he was even capable of seeing in dreams anymore. 

 

All he could do was continue to drink poison again and again, letting one humiliating sin after another paint his soul an even fouler shade of black. His pain would never dull, he would never get used to it, it would only grow sharper over time. 

 

That woman was poison. He often repeated to himself. No, living itself is a poison. 

There was no cure, no antidote for simply being alive.  
If he had to choose between hurting the person he loved and himself the choice was obvious.  
Just once, he wanted to be the one who was hurt instead of her. 

Just once, in any way possible, he wanted to protect her.  
Even if their was toxic flowing through his veins, venom coalescing in the back of his mouth, and a poisonous mould growing underneath his skin there had to be at least one person he did not have to hurt. Someone who did not regret meeting him. Someone he could help.  
Someone who he could be medicine for.  
Salve to their wounds.  
And if he could not do that the least he could do was minimize their pain, by amputation.  
If the red string was around his finger, he would cut his entire hand off. 

He would cut his heart out and put it in a box for her. 

  
Tanaka gripped his side as red blossomed on his bandages. He smiled like it felt good to reopen old wounds, even though it didn’t. He walked towards the door, but before he could reach it Sonia grabbed at his sleeve. She pulled on him until he was forced to look back at her.  
  
The scarf she had been wearing all this time, his scarf, she wrapped it around his neck. She looped it around a few extra times, until it covered his entire lower face. Her fingers traced the side of that face through the scarf, and then the fabric became all twisted up as she wrenched his face towards her. 

 

  
Gundham tried to resist, convulsing, trying to slither away like a snake. She kissed him through the fabric of his scarf. Gundham’s resistance against her slowly died down. His stiffened body uncoiled at her touch. The hands that were trying to tear her away from him, slowly loosened from the fabric of her clothes and fell to his sides. He looked so desperate to hold onto what was right in front of him, to return her touch in any way.  
  
Hinata knew enough about fairytales.  
A kiss could bring life.  
A kiss could also bring death.  
The princess kissed the poisoned apple, bringing it to her lips, before the prince kissed her.  
Gundham did not just look like he was dying to kiss her.  
He looked like death. 

Some small part of him was killed with that kiss.  
The kind of kiss romeo might give juliet just to taste the poison on her lips.  
Just to die with her.  
Perhaps Sonia really thought she could save him with that kiss.  
He refused to kiss her back.  
His lips were still against hers, as they kissed through the fabric.  
Her smile-  
His veins, twisted up inside of him, underneath his skin.  
If looks gave heart attacks-  
The look of love in her eyes would have pierced straight through him.  
She loved him like an addict.  
She kissed him like a statue.  
She loved him like a ravenous pack of dogs.  
Barking, snapping their teeth, bloodthirsty, hungry, vicious.  
So indirect, so impersonal, like tasting snow against her lips.  
And still he refused her, but he would not pull away either.  
She took a step forward, and he took a step back.  
In perfect rhythmn, like they were dancing tangled up in red string.  
They did not find each other, they only became more lost.

She looked like she wanted to fall into him.  
He thought if she forced him to swallow needles it would have been less painful.  
They both suffered through that kiss for an excruciatingly long. 

 

Then it was over.  
She wanted to rest his forehead against his, but that was impossible. “That was a magic spell. You’re not allowed to throw your life away just yet, it’s bound to mine by that kiss.”  
  
Perhaps she really was trying to save him with that kiss, but he just looked more damned.  
  
“Princess…” He wiped his mouth. His face was flushed, but it looked like it was stained with blood rather than the red feelings of a first love. 

 

Sonia suddenly picked up a flower and put it in front of his face. “Look at this, I found a flower inside this city. I thought I’d give it to you as soon as you wake up.”  
  
It was a white flower.  
He did not know what kind it was.  
He was not suited for white flowers. 

She should have brought him camelias, or some kind of potted plants.  
Plants for funerals suited him much better.  
  
“You… you haven’t called me by my name yet, so don’t go yet.”  
  
“Hmph. I’ll give in to you for now.”  
He said, just like he always did in the end.  
  
“There’s a field of flowers just outside this hospital. I’ll show it to you sometime, maybe they have sunflowers for your dark devas!” Sonia said happily, as if she had entirely forgotten her sorrow a moment ago.  
  
Outside the hospital room, Nanami raised her head at the mention of a flower field. Then, she just lowered it again as if disappointed and said nothing. 

 

🦔

 

When Hinata left for more of his alone time, which they all agreed was him obsessively watching Komaeda on the televisions in a pitch black room, Fuyuhiko called them together.  
  
Them consisted of Kirumi, Pekoyama, Gundham, Sonia, Mikan, and Emukae who would not leave even when Fuyuhiko yelled at her. 

 

“You all know what I’m going to say. If he kills some kid Hajime’s mind is going to get even worse. That’s what scum like us are for, Peko.”

 

  
Peko nodded. “You do not even need to give the order.”  
She sat there still. Her expression looked carved out of ice.  
_Do not think about it._ _  
_ _If you think, you will hesitate._

They split up into one team of three and two teams of two. Pekoyama and Kirumi went ahead, and Fuyuhiko hung back just in the radius of his bangle. While the two of them were at the head of the group, Kirumi and Pekoyama whispered to each other.  
  
“I have no wish to fight you Pekoyama, we both would be much more useful to the young master if we worked together.”  
  
“I don’t care what you want.”  
  
“Then, you wish for something for yourself? Outside of the young master’s best interests? That’s what a human would do.”

 

“The young master doesn’t need a tool. He needs someone to be by his side.” 

  
“I’m not trying to antagonize you, I’m merely offering my advice for what I think is best. I just wonder, are you capable of being that person?”  
  
“What…?”

 

“Why did you call yourself a tool all this time? You’re not a good one. Not that useful. Not good at holding back your emotions, or putting others desires before your own.”  
  
A broken tool.  
That was what that girl had called her. “So what if you’re a better tool than me. That’s just sad. You’re even farther away from being a person than I am. I pity you even-”  
  
“And yet you’re jealous of me.”  
  
Pekoyama grinded her teeth instead of responding.  
  
“This is just my theory, but you can kill without feeling anything, you agree to do things you know is wrong. Isn’t being a tool just a shallow comfort for you? If you’re not the one swinging the sword, if you’re not the one killing them, you don’t have to feel guitly.” 

  
“What are you saying?”  
  
“Simply this. You never were a tool. You were just a failure of a person from the start.”  
  
Pekoyama knew she could not raise her voice, because Fuyuhiko was right there. They all agreed to fight that girl together, and it would look like Peko was the one causing the problem. “Why… me?” Two words eked their way out of her throat.  
  
She was barely a person to begin with.  
There must have been someone else that Kirumi could mock, someone more substantial.  
Pekoyama could barely smile, why did Kirumi want to see her cry so badly.  
  
“I told you, I really am just trying to help.”

 

Medaka and Nanami were sitting in the hallway as usual. Nanami raised her head, turning her ear.  
  
“Hey, didn’t you say you didn’t know much about people? How did you know about Yasuke and Kamukura then? How are you capable of giving that advice?”  
  
“I’m a quick learner. Those two are human… at least in the way they always think of themselves first.” Nanami opened her mouth and closed it, as if she wanted to say more but decided against it. “Why do you keep following me around?”  
  
“You… remind me of someone. Those quick and snappy retorts, the way you fight me every step of the way…”  
  
“Shiranui right? I saw her outside of this hospital a few minutes ago. You should go quickly if you want to see her.”  
  
“Shiranui’s here?”

 

Medaka did not even stop to ask how Nanami had known the name of a person she never mentioned in front of her. She left. When she was sure the girl was gone, Nanami raised her head.  
  
“You can come out already. I sent her away.”  
  
“You really like her don’t you?” Pekoyama said, her hand gripping the sword at her back.  
  
“Don’t say something so disgusting. I just thought she would get in the way of our fun,” Nanami tugged at the collar of her Kimono at which point Pekoyama finally noticed, her white kimono was wrapped right side over left, the same way the dead were dressed. “You came here to kill me right? I was even polite enough to dress for the occasion.” 

 

“You knew we were going to kill you and you walked into this hospital anyway?”

 _What are you doing?_ _  
_ _Don’t think about it?_ _  
_ _Don’t talk to her._ _  
_ _You’ll hesitate. You know you will._

  
“I’m sorry, did I say something strange? It’s just nobody has ever wanted me alive, so living and dying isn’t a big deal to me.” 

  
She still remembered how Pekoyama said she was glad she had been born. _If only I could feel that way, just once in my life, just for a moment._ She gave a wistful thought.  
  
Kirumi stepped out behind Pekoyama, putting a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “You don’t have to suffer anymore. I am Kirumi Tojo- here to carry you away.”  
  
“What a charming way to greet a woman. I never thought the day would come when somebody would speak those words to me.” Nanami smiled, it was just another sickness on her face. “You must be a gentleman, I’m just a sick girl you know who can only tremble and wait for a gentleman like you to come  save her.”  
  
She simply sat there waiting to die.  
It confused both of them.  
They could not help but be reminded of a pale reaper.

Her skin glistened with her own sweat.  
Skin as white as bones.  
She had a certain glow to her as if she was backlit by moonlight.  
Those high angled and sharp cheeks.  
That gave a hollow look to her face.  
Her hair somehow perfectly combed, despite its length, and her ragged body.  
Tied back by a single flower.  
She had that exact same kind of beauty as flowers blooming in spring.  
Only to die in winter buried by snow.  
Her body so thin you, you could trace out her bones with just a fingertip.  
Fragility, was beautiful in a lady.  
She was the kind of woman who would be beautiful even in rags. 

Her body was already in tatters, her breathing haggard.  
She could barely stop herself from slumping her shoulders.  
Yet, even though she was already in pieces almost she almost could not bring herself to cut her.  
It felt like a sin to make a single mark on her skin. 

Almost.  
She almost hesitated. 

She threw a knife straight into her belly. The tip was covered in a nerve agent that had been given to them, by Gundham’s poison. “It pains me to do this, so I’ll kncok you out and she’ll cut your head off. As quick and painless as possible, poison works wonders as a painkiller.”  
  
“Thanks - so much.”  
  
After Nanami spoke she moved, as if she was reaching a hand out towards them. Perhaps she was just falling because her legs no longer supported her, but Fuyuhiko did not even let her falter forward.  
  
Her second dagger hit Nanami in the shoulder, savaging her kimono, ravaging her skin, and digging deep into her flesh, the blast alone slammed her back into the wall and partially embedded her in there. 

  
Her bleary gaze, looking half mad from fever cast itself on Pekoyama.  
As if she was expecting something.  
Pekoyama slowly slid out the sword from her back. Nanami, hunched down, did not even look up anymore. _Don’t think. Don’t hesitate._ She raised her sword high, and let the katana fall ready to chop straight through a neck so fragile it looked like she could barely hold up her head.  
  
All Nanami could do was gasp breathlessly. She tried to spit, but nothing came out at all.  
Poison added to her body on top of illness. 

It would be over soon.  
For the girl who had never been born.  
She closed her eyes and remembered her father’s voice, or rather her father’s voice had never left her ears.  
  
_“Forgive me, Nannami.”_ _  
_ _“My true wish was for you to lead this family, but that will not be possible.”_ _  
_ _“When I say you’re not qualified to inherit our house or family name, it’s not because you’re a girl, and not because you’re sick. It’s just that I - no, not just me, this goes for anyone in the world who would have been fit to be your parent.”_

 _Her father looked down at her as if she was nothing, not even a member of his family, not even his blood relation. Which was why she was not even allowed to carry their last name from that point on._ _  
_ **_  
_ ** **_“No one could ever raise someone of such unparalleled strength as you.”_ **

  
Pekoyama cut through-  
Nothing at all.  
And her sword dug into the wall. She struggled to pull it out, feeling instinctual confusion and something else.

 _Fear._  
  
Nanami had already ducked down, and now she sprung up slamming her hand into the other girl’s stomach with tremendous force. Pekoyama was knocked back before she could even remove her blade from the wall.  
  
The next moment, Kirumi felt a dagger tear into her shoulder exactly where Nanami had been hit a moment ago, savaging her maid’s uniform, ravaging her skin, and digging deep into her flesh.  
  
Her arm suddenly went limp, and she dropped all of the daggers she was carrying in between her fingers to the floor.  
  
Nanami stood up. Her Kimono smeared with blood and full of holes. She had looked weak enough already, but now she looked like a phantom, like a ghost who haunted the hospital halls. She looked like she was barely holding her balance, as if she was walking on a tightrope between life and death.  
  
Pekoyama sensing a spider, moved to crush it before it could sink its fangs in Fuyuhiko. She nimbly moved faster than Nanami in her low stamina could keep up with, and tore that sword free from the wall.  
  
Pekoyama held her sword in stance, feeling this was going to be a serious opponent not just a little girl who she was putting out of her misery.  
  
Nanami simply tilted her head to the side. She continued speaking as if they were having a normal conversation. “Don’t you think taking a stance like this is a waste of time? Plus, like you are now you’re giving away what you’re planning to do next.” 

“...!” Pekoyama had heard those words before.  
From Enoshima Junko’s mouth.  
  
Nanami made her move.  
Slow steps, one at a time.  
Edging closer, and yet even though she was the assassin Pekoyama felt like she was being approached by the killer in a horror movie. She was nothing more than an innocent girl waiting to be slashed to pieces.  
She closed in with a single swing of her sword, aiming for Nanami’s face, right for the eyes. She closed her eyes even underneath her blindfold.  
  
_Whoosh._  
As if all of her pained movements, as if her weak body was just an act, she easily dodged the strike again. Her body which looked so still that the nerves were deadened, suddenly came to life again.  
  
“You’re right, your blind swordfighting is cool,” It sounded like a joke, but there was nothing mocking about her tone, in fact there was nothing at all in her voice. She just casually had a conversation with the person who was trying to kill her as if nothing was the matter. “What I really think is cool, is all the time you must have spent learning how to use that sword. Did you do one thousand swings a day? So cool. I’m sure you must have given it most of your life.” 

  
Nanami spoke slowly, in between her sighs as her sickness robbed her of her breath.  
  
“ _Cough, cough, cough._ The mere thought of you holding that sword until your fingers bleed - makes me jealous.”  
  
Nanami raised her pure, untouched hands.  
That was the kind of beauty she was, it looked like nothing in the mortal world was worthy.  
None of it could even come close to scratching her.  
In fact, those hands were so glossy, so pristine, like she never did a day of work in her life.  
  
“...Huh?” 

Nanami continued not even listening to Pekoyama, “You guys are the ones who don’t understand - what not being allowed to make any effort feels like… No matter what I do, I won’t get any praise. Every success, every win, is dismissed as inevitable. Know how that feels, No, you have no idea.” 

  
She wasn’t thinking anymore, but now it was out of fear as Nanami closed the distance between them again. She would have figured it out otherwise, because she had seen it before. Instead, just like an animal lashing out she simply swung her sword to stop the other girl from getting closer to her.  
  
And then, a single strike hit her wrist.  
The same strike Medaka used to knock the sword away from her hand earlier.  
  
“What are you saying?” Pekoyama cried out.  
  
Time to clear something up.  
Nanami’s father, taught her nothing, he exiled her from the family, he refused to raise her as his own daughter. Nanami had never left her sickbed for her entire life.

Not because of her sickly constitution.  
And surely not because she was a woman.  
She was simply too strong to learn anything from anyone.  
Not only did her father refuse to raise her, he locked her away in a box, and barred her from ever leaving. He filled the box with stuffed animals and toys out of some pity, but she was never allowed to leave.  
Her strength broke the mold.  
Her strength broke the rules.  
Not only as her father, but as a human being, her father saw it as his duty to contain her.  
She really had not seen the outside world before this, not even once.  
But, how could se attain this strength?  
It was easy.  
Nanami raised two fingers to her eyes, and removed the contacts masking the true color.  
Bright red.  
Like spider lilies.  
That noxious color.  
Pekoyama recognized that gaze.  
She had been watching - all this time.  
She had been watching - for almost the whole week.  
_Watching._  
And learning.  
Nanami had the ability to watch and learn with unreasonable with unreasonable precision.  
Pekoyama realized why Nanami was in this game now.

“How do I explain this? You know in the godzilla movies, when the huge monsters shows up to destroy Tokyo, and the military men are only there to be crushed to demonstrate his strength. Godzilla can’t be stopped until another monster shows up.”  
  
A monster like Kurokami Medaka, like Kamukura Izuru, like Enoshima Junko.  
She was sent here to contain them.  
If she saw something once, she remembered it in every detail.  
But if she saw something twice, it was hers.  
  
“I thought I did a good enough job foreshadowing it, that it would make for an exciting reveal but really this is rather boring,” Nanami said as she slowly walked over to pick up Pekoyama’s discarded sword, lifting it up. “Really, really, I’m boring the audience finishing the fight this quickly.”

She swung the sword exactly as Pekoyama had, and Pekoyama did not even see herself bleed because of her blindfold. Nanami was careful not to tear it.  
  
For a moment as casually as one might contemplate what they were planning to eat for dinner, she considered just gauging those eyes out.  
  
“I forgot to give you my name. How rude of me. You must think I’m an awful girl.”

 

**Name: Amami Nanami**

**Likes: Elegance, Her Brother, Flowers** **  
** **Dislikes: Rudeness, Human Beings, Weeds** **  
** **Talent: Perfect Analysis** **  
** **Personality Type: Minus**

 

Pekoyama opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to beg for her life, or the life of Fuyuhiko, or maybe only to scream. Before she could, Nanami reached into the back of her mouth and ripped out the molar from behind her jaw.  
  
“Don’t think of trying to bite down on poison to kill yourself now that you’ve realized you’ve lost. That’s not very fun for me,” Nanami said perfectly conversational. “Now, where is that master of yours? Don’t worry, I’ll bury you two lovebirds together. Romantic, right?” 

 

She did not even sound psychotic.  
She did not sound like anything at all, just considerate and friendly. There was no malice or ill will in her words, she did not even seem to be hold anger at her would-be killers. As Pekoyama recovered from having a tooth pulled out, she just glared in disdain. She could not speak, only cough up phlegm and blood.  
  
Kirumi on the ground still was the one who had never seen such a thing before. “Impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible.”  
  
“I know - that’s why I’m so jealous. You guys get to have all the fun. I bet you never even ponder the sorrows of people who can do anything but are unable to give it their all.”  
  
She did not look like she was having fun.  
She was just cold, mechanical, in the way she went about things.  
She could not even give a manic grin of enjoying despair like Enoshima could.  
  
“You were faking the sickness, you pretended to be poisoned. All so you could make us let our guard down.”  
  
“Hm? No I wasn’t,” Nanami wrenched the other dagger out of her stomach. Her kimono bloomed further red but she did not seem to mind.  
  
How could she call it nothing? That simply couldn’t be. “Poison affects genius as much as it does idiots, your body should be torn apart…”  
  
“Torn apart…” She looked confused. “That’s nothing, I feel that way every day. Poison is a painkiller right, pain and suffering are old friends of mine by now. A little more can’t hurt, literally.”

  
She touched her stomach for a moment.  
“Even if it does hurt ever so slightly.” 

  
Nanami - a woman who should have never been born.  
She’d done nothing to reach the top.  
The talent that Pekoyama had killed, and killed herself over and over again her whole life to obtain, was hers through no toil whatsoever.  
Her strength broke the mold.  
Her strength broke the rules.  
Surpassing what could be called talent.  
  
“That’s why god punished me,” She murmured too herself. “With a billion maladies.”  
  
For being far too superior - they saddled her body with sickness after sickness. Her body gratuitiously packed with sickness, overflowing, each plenty fatal on its own, criss crossing diagnoses that invited even more complications, that made her life gratuiotiously exruciating. 

  
Yet her innate genius rejected the maladies.  
She rejected poison, and illness.  
Through all the pain of suffering, constantly on the edge of the ciff, she could not die. Her body refused to take that step. She could not get any weeker, and was too feeble to function, so she held out on the brink of death.  
She should have died by now.  
She should not - have been alive.  
Her body healed her, and her billion maladies made her sick.  
Just like her parents said, over and over, she never should have been born.  
Pain and suffering, and even a shinigami, were old friends to her.  
Dying and killing.  
And being killed.  
Had never been a big deal.  
  
“My parents tried to kill me several times but their assassination attempts failed.” She looked at Kirumi writhing underneath her. “Really, really, really, I’m jealous of you guys. You all live such dramatic lives, clearly someone wants you alive. Have you ever tried dying yet?”

 

Her mirthful smirk, artificial and painted on.  
She could not even laugh at their misery.  
She felt nothing like that.

All she felt was-  “You guys can take your health for granted - that makes me incredibly jealous, I never asked for my abilities. All I’ve ever wanted was a healthy body, and a dream of my own.”  


Her body kept her dreams from coming true.  
Her abilities rendered her dreams unnecessary.  
She suffered without dying.  
She slept without dreaming.  
She could not even fathom what the outside world looked like, locked away in her box.  
  
And all she could feel was sick, green envy, and a little tired of it all.  
That girl Medaka who still had the option to become human.

Who had the choice that she did not.  
  
“Really, I feel nothing at all, nothing but jealous.”  
  
She wanted to laugh but she could not even do that.  
She would just start coughing again. 


	27. The Destitute, The Vile

If you had to paint her, you could only use one color.  
Nanami had no red, she was green, green, green.  
Her existence was monotone, monochromatic, only one color.  
Green like the bacteria that divided again in her body.  
Green like her skin as it rotted away.  
Green, the color of her eyes.  
There was no white, no iris, no sclera, no pupil, it was two pools of water choked with algae.  
No other emotion shone in her eyes.  
Just the jealousy of a girl watching from behind her eyes, the world pass by without her.  
Through a set of glassy eyes, lacking any animation.  
Hoping one day the glass would break, or her eyes would rot away like the rest of her organs.

Nanami was ill.  
Nobody needed to be reminded of this.  
Yet, Nanami was reminded over and over.  
When she said a little more pain was nothing, she was just boasting. She thought if there was an audience watching her right now she wanted to look cool. Pain never dulled, pain was not something she could get used to, pain was never nothing.  
Pain was more pain.  
Healing was more pain.

 

Pain. To Nanami it was something like being awake in surgery. The medical techniques meant to heal the body also brutalized in their own way. If the anesthesia did not work, then the person would feel the scalpel slicing over their skin. They would feel the doctor slowly pulling their flesh apart, splitting it apart at the seams just by stretching the fibers to their limits. Peeling. The skin pulling away from the dermis. The softness of the flesh so easily torn, just like peeling a rotten orange. So soft it looks like it’s trembling, clinging to the layer underneath in one big mess. Clinging.

Fingers covered in sterile hospital gloves, feeling like cold rubber reaching inside of her. The cold mixed with the warm of her organs. Her organs trembling at their touch. Her own organs writhing and slithering around inside of her as if there was a nest of snakes making its home in her body. Instead of a womb she only had eggs to give birth to more snakes, more afflictions, more poisons, more malodies, more teeth biting into her and chewing her up from within.

Above her the doctor would just coldly, mechanically continue to operate on her body unaware of what he was feeling. Bodies needed to be ripped apart in order to be pieced back together again. Stretched out sinews that are so soft, but hard, and easily ripped into shreds.

Blood. It boiled with the heat of her body. It burned her veins and cauterized them, causing them to collapse. The pressure built underneath her skin made her feel like she was being strangled by her own veins from within, like a spiderweb both wrapping around her and pulling her in many different direction. Far worse than that, she felt a scissor made of cold steel cut through all of those pieces.

Even healing after the surgery was done, it was just a needle being pushed into her skin, and then pulled out. She felt the thread that was meant to stitch her back together, move like razor wire underneath the layers of her skin. The doctor roughly pulled it through, stabbing her skin, ripping the needle out, stabbing her skin, ripping the needle out, stab, rip, stab, rip, in that pattern until her skin was pulled tight and stretched beyond its limits forced to knit back together again.

The stitches just irritate her, like a slight itch. She wanted to scratch them again and again until her skin was raw. She wanted to rip them out and just bleed. That was her everyday life, she was awake for the surgery where she felt those hands inside of her tearing herself apart, and stitching herself back together again. For her, healing was just more pain, prolonged pain, stretching it out past its limit. Healing was a pain of its own.

Then, what was the point?  
She was green like scum at the bottom of a pond.  
Then, why not just die?

She started to regard herself as some sort of monster. She was sure if someone cut a hole in her stomach, disembowling her, and then pulled all of her intestines out like it was one long stretch of chord, she would grow them back by the next day. If she cut large gashes in her wrists, and then pulled out her veins from underneath her skin ripping them away from her body, she would see them growing out from underneath her skin, extending like freshly spun silk in a spider’s web the next day. She would feel it, the spiders crawling underneath her skin, biting up little pieces of her flesh because they needed the energy to heal her veins.

If the mucus around her stomach burned away, and the bile and acid churning in that stomach started to melt a hole in the flesh of her organ, and eat away at her own stomach until it spilled out into the rest of her body and rendered her organs into some kind of acidic soup, she would be fine by tomorrow. She would feel a pain like a horrible hunger as her body regrew a stomach from nothing. She would retch, and vomit up nothing more than bile. She would burn the inside of her throat as she got rid of the acid inside of her so her new stomach could be born.

The worst was her heart. She was sure her heart like the rest of her body, was never actually intended for a living person. Her heartbeat was faint, but even that small murmur in her chest stretched the elastic of her heart far past its limit. She felt like every time her heart expanded, small tears formed in the fibers of her heart, and then when it contracted even more tears formed. The worst part was not living with these tears, like there was several holes in her heart, but rather the feeling of a needle being sunken into her heart, and pulled out. A needle stabbing her over and over again. The more holes in her heart, the more her heart needed to stitch itself up. Her heart never healed though, because these were just faulty stitches. They frayed, came loose, as the strings were stressed over and over again, and her heart needed more stitches.

Just from living.  
Just from something as simple as her heart breathing, or her air filling with lungs.  
She tore her insides apart over and over again.  
She was patched up over and over again.  
A patchwork heart.  
That was all she had.  
No wonder she was such a cold and heartless girl.

What is weaker.  
Than a human heart that shatters over and over.  
But still lives.

She liked to garden. Rather, she thought she would have liked to garden if her parents ever allowed her outside. When she was younger she used to dream about playing in the garden with her brother, or helping him pull out weeds.

Once her mother told her.  
Or maybe she didn’t tell her, her memories were foggy.  
Think of those flowers you plant in the garden each year.  
You’re just like that.  
You.  
Must wilt.  
Fall.  
Root.  
Rise.  
In order to bloom.

All she could think of was what agony it must be to live a perennial life. People thought that flowrs blooming once in spring, only to wilt were tragic, but she saw it as a happy ending. Far worse was being forced to feel your own roots wither, to go hungry but be unable to feed yourself, to be so cold as you’re buried in snow but be unable to numb, to feel yourself shriveling up and shrinking away from the light but unable to forget what the sun’s warmth felt like. Then, you had no choice but to rise, to stretch your spine out painfully, pierce through the snow, and bloom. Even that moment of blooming could not be enjoyed, because you were so used to the dark at this point you felt like the sun was going to burn your petals.

How happy flowers must be, when children foolishly snapped their stems and then pulled them apart petal by petal.  
She envied those petals that were scattered to the wind and torn so far apart they forgot what their original shape was.  
She envied the flowers that were buried under soil, and then slowly rotted away to become the nutrients for other flowers.  
She could not even dream about the field of flowers.

For her there was no flowers at all.  
Flowers beheaded themselves at her feet. 

“Trying to die when someone’s talking to you, huh? Is conversation with me really that unpleasant?”  
  
Nanami said looking down on Pekoyama. 

Suddenly Nanami’s attention snapped back to reality as she realized one of the broken girls she was standing over was trying to bite down hard at her tongue, with no hesitation at all she shoved her fingers into the girl’s mouth. The girl did not stop biting down, in fact she bit so hard that Nanami felt her skin breaking under those teeth like they were being cut by dull knife, and the crunching of bones. Nanami did not flinch at all, and did not remove her hand until Pekoyama’s jaw got tired.

She stared at her own pale hand, her fingers were bent at an odd angle and drops of blood poured out of her wounds like crimson jewels. Her skin gave it a glossy finish, and just like a doll’s hand made of porcelain, it looked at any moment one of her fingers might just snap off.

Pekoyama finally scraped together what little sense she had left.  
Nanami was not going to let her kill herself.  
Not only that, but Fuyuhiko was nearby.  
She could not under any circumstances kill herself in front of him.

Pekoama tried talking while choking back the taste of copper in her mouth. “I thought you said you were dressing like a funeral.”

“I never said it was my funeral.”

“Ah…”

“That was funny, you can laugh if you want. Are you too afraid of choking on your own blood if you laugh?”

“No, but you sound like you wanted to die," Pekoyama was too familiar with death to miss that.

“What I want…?” Nanami’s eyes puzzled for a moment as if she had heard unfamiliar words she did not know the meaning of. Then those same eyes narrowed, “I don’t have that choice. No matter how excruciating, no matter how painful, no matter how close I am to death, my body just won’t choose death.”

Her eyes waned like a crescent moon that was mostly eclipsed by its own shadow, only the tiniest sliver of light remained in them. “Everyone else is born with that choice but… I most likely… do not even deserve that choice anymore. Perhaps I never did.”

Because she was born.  
She was tainted with original sin.  
A rotten fruit.  
God punished her.

Pekoyama spat in her face, saliva mixed with blood. “Just die then.”

“So I’ve been told,” Nanami tried to smile gentle, and pleasant, but every time she smiled it looked as sharp and rusted as an old gardening sickle waiting to cut someone’s head off.

“Why aren’t you killing me?” Pekoyama wondered why she was even bothering to ask. 

“Why indeed?” Nanami herself looked confused for a moment. “Perhaps I wanted to torture you, but I have no idea how to torture anyone. Perhaps I can google it.”

“I would rather you didn’t.”

“Okay, I would hate to cause you or others any trouble,” Nanami said as she raised her head and looked at the broken bodies on the floor in front of her. Except for the blood on her face, she looked like a perfectly agreeable young woman. “Ah. I get it. I figured out that hurting other people does not make me feel any joy at all. That’s probably a good thing, or is it a bad thing?”

“How should I know?”

“Those boys were always hurting that girl to make themselves feel better. Why did they do that?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about," Pekoyama said, but the conversation was rather one sided. 

“It must have been because boys are dumb.”

Nanami leaned in close. Her eyes were so large, like two waning moons, they seemed to have their own gravitational pull. Those empty eyes belonged to a curious child, not a heartless killer, but emptiness was still emptiness even if it was called ‘innocence’. She just lacked any experiences to make her feel any true anger. Her heart was so fragile it could not even hold onto malice. Feeling those emotions would probably tear her apart worse than any sickness. “You… you’re like me are you? You know that there are people who only exist to be tools. People such as myself… and you. You’re a sword too aren’t you?”

Nanami had no dreams, no individuality.  
She was just a genius, she was just a pair of eyes with nothing behind them.

“I…” Pekoyama hesitated. 

“This is the first time I felt like I could relate to another person, or maybe just another tool. As a sword you’re rusted, and you’d break easily, ah but I’m jealous of that too.”

Nanami said because she could not break no matter what.

“I am not angry you tried to cut me. That’s what swords do after all.”

“I’m not…I didn’t want… to cut you," Pekoyama did not want to stop thinking, to be able to kill that easily. 

“Why are you thinking about what you are, and what you’re not? Are you trying to tell me as a sword you want to choose who you cut?”

“I’m not a sword.”

“Shut your fucking mouth about Peko!”

Fuyuhiko screamed behind her, he was accompanied by the loud piercing yells of several gunshots. However, Nanami dodged them all with nothing more than a slight twist of her ankle and a turn of her hips.

The next moment she appeared behind Fuyuhiko. She grabbed the gun from his hand, only to murmur. “I don’t know how to use this,” and just hit him on the head with the butt instead. “Well, no matter.”

“How did you dodge that you fucking fuck?” Fuyuhiko was too stressed to come up with good insults. 

“How dirty. I’m still a pure lady you know,” Nanami scoffed down at him, idly wondering how many successive hits it would take to make his skull cave in on itself. “All you have to do is watch where the gun is pointing and then calculate where the bullet is going to travel to, it’s not that hard. You’re just slow.”

“I don’t give a shit. I already know how stupid I am. I’m the living definition of mindless violence! That’s why I’m gonna make you take back what you said about Peko.”Fuyuhiko drew a knife from his belt and flicked it open bringing it up to stab her.  
  
“Are you going to take one of my fingers. The yakuza is so scary." She said, before grabbing his wrist and twisting it in the wrong direction until his fingers went so weak he could no longer hold onto the knife.

Nanami tilted her head inquisitively. “Which one of those two is Peko? They both look the same to me.”

“Peko is Peko. She ain’t anybody else but Peko.”

Whatever that means. Nanami sighed. “Grumpy-san, I have to criticize how you’ve been taking care of your sword.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t say anything at all about us . I’ll cut your damn tongue out bitch.”

Nanami was taken aback. As if she did not realize she had said something rude. “I suppose you’re right. That was unreasonable of me.” It was none of her business, how other people decided to use their swords, especially as a sword herself.

Nanami let out another sigh. She let Fuyuhiko drop to the floor as if she was too tired to even finish him off. “Idle talk is boring. I don’t want to look like a lazy girl, so I guess I’ll work hard killing the rest of your friends now.”

She said as she turned away, her green hair trailing behind her. It looked like grass being blown away by the wind. She thought that was wrong too. That someone as inhuman as her, a cadaver, a thing, had such an earthy look to her. She did not belong to the planet. Not at all. She was sure.

Just how much longer?  
How much more blood did she have to shed before she started to rust?  
How many times did she have to cut before her blade would break?  
Nanami muttered to herself.

“Hurry, hurry. They’re all waiting for you. Let’s hasten to do good. Or is it hasten to do bad?”

Just a little bit longer.  
Those words were her only hope.

🦔

As she dragged the sword behind her, the metal screamed against the tile floors.  
She would never be able to scream like that.  
There was no air in her lungs.  
Her scream, like everything else, died inside of her.

As she walked down the hallway, the shadows of the abandoned hospital turned into ghosts in the corner of her eyes. Nanami was not surprised by this, because death was already an old friend for her.

She was sure the dead were just mistaking her for one of their own. That is why they flitted in front of her eyes like fireflies. The shadows became an outline of her father, begging at her feet.

“Nanami. You are too exceptional. I can’t raise you... “  
“Can’t raise you…”  
“You are a monster.”  
“You shouldn’t have been born.”

Her father’s ghost twisted around her, it moved the same way oil did on water. She saw sparks at the edge of her vision. Small fires. It was like a frame of film being ruined by exposure to the light. All she could see was him fading away.

He looked like he was burning. His words were ash that filled her, and tar that clung to her ribs and dripped off in an oil like substance into her stomach. She wretched. Just hearing him made it impossible for her to breathe. He robbed her of all the air in her lungs.

Then her father’s body twisted around and became her mother’s instead. She was just a snake. Crawling. Slithering. Underneath Nanami’s flesh. No wonder she felt like she was constantly being poisoned, tiny snakes were always forcing their way through her veins.

“Pitiful girl…”  
“You are truly pitiful.”

Her mother hissed at her. The same way a fire hissed as the last of its fuel burned up. Nanami looked up and saw her mother in front of a moon that took up the whole sky. She forgot she was in a hospital for a moment and thought she was in the land of the dead. It must have been easy to wander there by mistake since she walked side by side with the reaper. She stepped on something she thought was a flower, but it turned out to be a bone, crushed like powder under her foot.

“Can’t even die…”  
“Can’t even live…”

Her mother’s voice strained like she was on the point of tears, but Nanami was the one who wanted to cry more than anyone else.

“You are a failure of life.”  
“Someone like you.”  
“Like you.”  
“Like you should die.”

“Worthless.”

Nanami could not even hate her parents.  
She did not know what hate was, or what love was.  
She did not remember their faces.  
Did her mother look like her?  
Did she have any of her father in her?  
Did her mother ever look at her once and think I made this child?  
Did her father ever once feel like he had to protect her?

“Nanami.”  
“Nanami.”

All she felt was, a dull and constant throbbing.  
She was getting tired of hearing those words.  
It was boring to be told the same thing over and over again.

“I don’t need you two to tell me that.”

Nanami knew her parents were not here, and these voices in her head were just memories.  
Sanus.  
Healthy.  
Insane.  
The opposite of that.  
If only she could go mad, but she was too aware to do that. Her eyes were too good, so she saw the shadows shifting in front of her and knew in the end rationally that they were just shadows.

Until that shadow became a hand reaching forward. Nanami was not even taken by surprise by that, she reacted instantly and grabbed Emukae by the wrist, using the girls momentum to throw her over her shoulder.

Nanami for good measure, grabbed the ribbon tied around her hair and smashed her face into the ground.

It was really unfortunate.  
If only she were a little less aware of reality, that surprise attack would have worked.  
She was too sane, to be around mad people.  
She was too mad, to be around normal, good people.  
So basically, she was alone either way.

Nanami heard a whimper escape a girl’s lips, and whipped her head around suddenly. Tsumiki Mikan stood there, holding onto a scalpel, threatening Nanami with it.

Nanami cracked a smile, or rather her face cracked. “That’s an improper use of medical tools. You’re a poor nurse.”

“D-don’t insult my skills as a nurse. That’s my only shred of self confidence. That’s like telling me to go die," Mikan squeaked. 

“Well, I am trying to kill you so, go die." 

“That’s so mean!”

“What if I say please?” Nanami continued like it was normal conversation. 

“It’s still mean!”

“I hate to be rude, but…” Nanami simply watched as Mikan rushed forward and stabbed haphazardly in the air in front of her. That girl was probably not that serious about killing her. She had the eyes of a killer yes, but they were directed away from her.

Nanami easily dodged every single cut through the air, the only thing that the blade came in contact with was the fabric of her kimono. She kept dodging, and then jumped back with one foot when she got bored of that.

“All you did was shred my kimono,” Nanami sheepishly crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s indecent.”

“I-I’m sorry!” Mikan cried out by reflex.

“You couldn’t even kill an infant with that kind of strength.”

“That’s a terrible metaphor. Why would I even want to do that?

“Sorry, I lack experience talking with others so…” Suddenly, because she was distracted for just a moment Nanami felt something dig into her foot, biting through the thin sandals she wore. She looked down and saw Emukae’s teeth digging into her foot. Even if the rest of her body would not move she looked determined to chew Nanami to death.

Nanami saw a rash start to spread up her foot.  
Why was this?  
Oh, it was because she had stepped in a weed.  
It looked like dirt spreading all over her clean skin. She hated dirt. She hated uncleanly things. Sickness arose from filth, it arose from lack of hygeine. It would only make her sicker. She did not want others to touch her, to have their germs on her.

“Like Mikan alone.”  
Emukae said, reaching forward trembling fingers.

It wasn’t a person.  
It was just a weed.  
She saw a sudden outgrowth of weeds on the ground, and that trembling hand was just one particularly long weed being blown by the breeze.

“Why are you touching me without permission? You…”  
Nanami raised her foot.   
Weed.  
Weed.  
Weed.  
Weed.  
Weed.  
She stomped.  
She stomped out the weed.  
A weed.  
Not a part of this garden.  
Just like her.  
Until she heard something breaking underneath her feet, until blood gushing up and hitting her in the face brought her back to her senses. Emukae’s head rolled away, because she had stepped on her neck again and again until it cracked in two.

Nanami caught a glimpse of the red on her face in the glass of a nearby window, like it was the only color in a monochrome world.

She left Emukae and Mikan alone, muttering to herself she needed to find something to clean her face off. She found herself in an empty room, and splashed water on her face in the hospital room bathroom. Only then did she look at her kimono and see how much blood was sunk into it.

She could not tell which stains were her own, and which were other people’s.  
Filthy, absolutely filthy.  
She pulled at the fabric of her kimono. “What a mess. I’m never going to become a lady at this rate.”  
“You were never going to become a lady to begin with. You don’t meet the height requirement.”

Huh?  
She wasn’t alone.  
She looked up to see a boy tied down to the bed. She supposed she just had not looked at him when she walked into the room.

“My life is quite tragic, don't you think? With a body like this I’ll never be able to ride a roller coaster. Will you cry for me?”

“Sorry, too busy crying and bitching over my own insignificant problems to give a shit about yours,” Yasuke said, as sharp tongued as ever.

“What are you doing tied to that bed anyway?”

“I’m doing this new kind of meditation called contemplating my own stupidity. I’ve reached idiot enlightenment by this point.”

“Really?”

“No, I was mostly just talking shit.”

“That seems to be all you’re good for. Is that your talent?”

“Jeez, you’re telling me,” Yasuke said making casual conversation to the girl covered in blood. He wondered if being Enoshima Junko’s friend had made him too well-adjusted to all of this.

“Hmm, so which one are you again? I’ve forgotten your face.”

“I’m the asshole.”

“That could be anybody I’ve met so far.”

“I’m an asshole but I’m kind of clever about it.”

“My, my. It’s probably a bad idea for us to speak to each other. We’re both flinging enough acid with our tongues that this whole room is going to melt.”

 

Yasuke struggled against the ties that were keeping him against the bed. “It’s pretty much a bad idea every time I open my mouth but that’s never stopped me before.”

“Hey, so should I torture you?”

 

“Meh. You might as well.” Yasuke said, his voice completely deadpan. “It’s not like my life can get any worse at this point.”

“I don’t know how to torture people.”

“Uh… man, you could google it I guess?”

“I know nothing about the internet. I’m a girl that was born in the wrong era.”  
She was born in the wrong era no matter when she was born.  
“I never should have been born.”

“Yeah, you and me both. We were born wrong. What the fuck ever already. No matter how much you lament your own birth it’s not going to change the fact that you were born. You’re still stuck here with me. Haha, sucks to be you.”

“I could die.”

“If you die that doesn’t erase the fact that you were alive once. If I have to suffer through being alive then everybody else has to.”

Nanami, felt something faint fluttering in her heart. Butterfly wings symbolized the fragile boundary between life and death, because their wings were so easy to tear apart, thinner than her skin, thinner than paper.

“You say strange things…”

“Well, I’m a shitty doctor, but I’m not that shitty that I tell people to just go die.”

“Funny. A doctor told me that once,” Nanami’s sick, infectious, smile spread across her face. She smiled so hard her cheeks looked like they were shriveling up and rotting. “I don’t think I like them much.”

“I know this sounds completely worthless coming out of my mouth, but I’m sorry someone said that to you. He sounds like a worse doctor than me. That’s saying something.”

She held a hand over his neck. That’s right, she really did not know.  
If she wanted to die then why not roll over and let Pekoyama behead her?  
Life and death are old friends.  
I love them.  
So…  
So...  
When will death love me back?

“Tch, you want to shut me up so bad. Well I can’t blame you. I want to do this to me, too.”

As she squeezed Yauske’s neck tight, suddenly the wind changed and the sudden breeze was enough to knock a fragile girl like her over.

She saw him.  
Pitch black hair without any light.  
Red and green eyes, glimmering, glimmering, capturing the light and reflecting it back a thousand times like well cut gemstones.  
He’s beautiful.  
She thought immediately.  
I have waited my whole life, for such beauty, to take my breath away.

“It always turns out as I predicted. How dull. You’re the game master and you followed Medaka around all that time to make us fight each other.”

“Why are you stating the obvious like it’s some revelation? Do you want me to pat you on the head and praise you for figuring it out.”

“...”

Nanami suddenly flipped into the air, moving in a way that looked impossible for her body to move. There must have been some strings somewhere, pulling her body around, forcing that cadaver to move, puppeteering her broken frame. She gently touched the top of his head.

“What a good, smart, child. I am so proud of you.”

Then, Nanami landed behind him.

Yasuke snorted. “She’s got you there.”

Kamukura looked back. “This is why you’re tied to the bed.”

“Really, I just thought you were into some kinky shit. You should stop repressing yourself so much, really, you barely have a personality to repress in the first place.”

Nanami covered her cheeks. She wanted to blush, but there was no color in her face, and no blood in her veins. “Talking this way in front of a lady. Are you two the terrible men in the outside world my father always warned me about?”

 

“Yes,” Kamukura answered her question. The fact that he did not hesitate at all, or waffle between personalities probably meant he had seen the broken state of his friends before he reached her.

She smiled.  
She was successful in provoking him.  
Death devoured by a beast did not sound like a bad way to die.  
His hands came at her like fangs.  
She brushed him off, like she was gently taming an animal.  
The two of them watched each other closely.  
They were reading each other, predicting each other.  
It was a fight where both members saw each step ten steps in advance.  
It was more a game of chess than an actual fight, but played out within seconds.  
The time limit was the space between heart beats.  
A flurry of their limbs filled the air.  
Nanami wanted to chat like she usually did, but neither of them gave each other room to breathe. They would both probably die of suffocation before either of them landed a single blow.  
It was like the moon and the tides of the ocean.  
If Nanami pushed then Kamukura pulled.  
If the moon and the water were at war with each other.  
If the water tried to pull the moon back.  
They were both struggling trying to control the entire fight.  
They both wanted to take the lead in the dance.  
Even though it was a gentleman’s job to take the lead, she thought.  
Ten she laughed, her empty, haggard, coughing laughter echoed in the back of her head.  
She swept her legs over his head.  
At the exact moment he threw his entire body at an angle, curving it to dodge.  
She felt his hair tickle her just a little bit.  
Are you angry at me?  
Do you pity me?  
What kind of face is that?  
I…  
Till the very end, I really don’t understand people at all.

His fist flew past her eyes right as she jerked her head to the side. He chained up two more blows, but she obviously saw the holes in them and ducked between them. Her body moved up and down like she was sewing it.

He swept at her feet, but she just lept into the air. She was lighter, and more agile than him. While he was far stronger than she would ever be with such a small body. Did she look graceful? Did she look lithe? Did he admire her beauty while thinking how best to break her into pieces. She turned her body around in the air and tried to slam her foot into the side of his head but he blocked her with an upright arm.

She just kicked twice more, and he bent his entire spine back to dodge her. Her toe nearly made contact with the bridge of his nose, but she missed.

If I said…  
I never wanted to hurt anyone.  
All I wanted was a life so boring that I’d sigh with dissatisfaction every day.  
That I’d idly wonder whether or not destroying the world would make it interesting.  
Would you believe me?

She didn’t understand people, least of all herself.  
I didn’t understand you either.  
The gentleness in your voice.  
The way you smiled at me.  
Still, and silent, always there, like a tree.  
The way your branches shook when you laughed.  
I…  
I don’t understand anything all about you, Rantaro.

She felt confused, because the person fighting in front of her did not remind her of herself even though they were both monsters. He reminded her of her brother.  
Because they were both empty.  
She would never forget her brother’s smile.  
His smile, completely empty, because he had thrown away all of his pain to hide it from her.  
Because he knew she was always suffering worth.  
He pretended to be strong for her.  
All he ever did was play make-believe with her.  
But… I wanted to see it.  
I wanted to see you.  
I want to see you again.  
You promised me.  
A field of flowers.

Suddenly, the present bled away into the past. It all rotted away in front of her and she could no longer distinguish between the two.

“Don’t you have friends other than me?”

“I’m a no good louse.”

“I’m disappointed with my younger brother is such a failure.”

“It’s tiresome to cater to what others want to do, and laugh at jokes that aren’t even funny. If I change myself too much for others, I’ll lose sight of who I am.”

“Then maybe you should do just that. Your current self is no good. Lazy boy.”

He was empty.  
He did not understand the point in life.  
He was just a substitute for the first born son.  
He did not get the meaning.  
He could not even have the slightest interest in others.  
He lived without getting involved in others because it was just easier that way.  
He was satisfied to work sluggishly part-time, and make a lukewarm attempt to just mindlessly do what their parents told him to do. He never tried anything else but being their first born son. His whole life was dictated for him, like he was a character in a book and he did not fight that. He did not even try to scribble in the margins.  
Even then, he always went to go see his sister.

He was someone who could not live for himself, so he tried to live for her. That was how worthless he was. With the allowance their parents gave him, he spent all of it buying her flowers, and artificial lights for her room to keep the flowers under. He watered them, and took care of them all by himself.

 

“One day, I’ll show you the world.”

“I’m aware,” he told her that many times before.

The only reason he agreed to let their parents control him, to dance in their palms was because one day he wanted to take the head of the family and free her.

“Do you want to switch with me?” She asked.

Rantaro shook his head. “No way, being sick looks painful.”

“You’re worthless.”

Her fingertips were so cold they felt like they were going to chip off. Yet, they were warm in his hands. If he was going to visit her tomorrow, then even as sickly as she was she felt like she could live on for tomorrow.

Live on?  
What for?

Confusing. Her brother was confusing, shifty, and impossible to pin down. She felt like he was not there with her, that he was in another dimension entirely.  
She wanted to join him there.  
The two of them could be the last human beings on earth.

 

One day her brother granted her wish. He snuck her out of her room. There was no wheelchair for her, so he carried her on his back. She had never seen a city outside of books before. All she had to do was ask him and he took her.

She gently bobbed up and down in his back. Despite the amazement she was feeling, she tried not to let it show on her face, as she was afraid that would be childish. She kept on a faceless mask like always.

The lights of the city, shone above her.  
Glimmering, glimmering, brilliantly.  
They were even brighter than the stars in her memories.  
Just this one night was enough.  
If she could have a happy night with her brother in the city, she would not regret being locked away the rest of her life. When she saw lights dancing in the air like fireflies, she wondered if happiness was supposed to be a fragile thing like that.  
Apparently, today was some kind of festival.  
A launched firework, bloomed like a red flower in the night sky.  
Nanami felt like red flowers would only bloom for her when she was buried in the ground.  
Fireflies zipped around in front of her.  
Then disappeared into the dark  
It was so fleeting and meaningless, just like the dreams she kept in her heart.  
She thought of her life. Of flowers. Of her brother.

“There’s so many people…” She finally murmured.  
How could anyone be alone in a world with this many people?

“Haha! Yep. If you’re scared you can hold onto big brother.”

He was not her big brother, and she was not scared.  
But she did hold onto him tightly.

“I don’t think I like people.”

“That’s fine. The only one you need to like is big brother!”

He was not her big brother.

“What if I don’t like you?”

“Then I’ll cry.”

“If you cry, I’ll just laugh at you.”

“Then, it’s worth it to cry to see you laugh again!”

She knew all of those words were as fake as he was, and yet they were comforting. Nanami looked up and saw the fireworks again. “...Like flowers.”

“Next time I’ll show you a whole field of flowers.”

“There’s a next time?”

There wasn’t.  
Their father found out when they got back to her room. He knocked Nanami to the floor with a strike. It was the first time anyone had ever raised their hand against her. The moment she saw him, she knew she could easily defend herself.

She wondered why she didn’t.  
Not because this man was her father.  
Not because it didn’t hurt or she was used to the pain.

“The hell are you doing old man!”

“You can’t take that thing out! She’s not like you. She’s not your sister. Why? Why the hell?” Nanami just continued to stare up at him. “It’s not safe to let her out.”

“Stop it…”

“If you want to let her go so badly, then break her arms and legs and wheel her around in a wheelchair. Then she won’t be a danger to others.”

The look of horror on her brother’s face was one she would never forget. It was his real feelings, painted in such clear, ugly colors, all over him.

“I can break them right now if you want to see your sister so badly.”

Her brother fell down and lowered his head to beg. “Fine, I’ll do it. Like I said I’ll do anything you want.”

After that day her brother never visited her again. He was never allowed to.

I guess this is just who I am.  
I’m either a sick girl, completely helpless.  
Or I’m a thing with no human feelings.  
I’m either too weak.  
Or I’m too strong I’ll step on everyone like they’re weeds.

She was not saddened by this.  
Really she was not.

In the present moment Kamukura nad herself filled the entire space between them with their violence. His hands moved around so fast to deflect her blows, he looked like he had as many as a god.

 

She analyzed him perfectly. Only one of his eyes had analysis, the other one was just a normal human eye, that reacted to her much slower than the other. There was a lag between his two eyes. Perhaps one was staring a few seconds into the past, while the other looked into the future, the world must be a dream to him.

It was very slight, but she saw the flaw in his defense.  
She brought her leg up.  
With the next move she would connect-  
She saw her brother’s image overlapped with his and hesitated.

“I’ll show you a whole field of flowers.”  
“I thought you were going to show me the world?”  
“I’ll show you a whole world of flowers.”  
“By getting my hopes up like this you’re just guaranteeing I’ll see you as even more of a disappointment later.”

 

“I don’t like playing boring games.”

“I must apologize for boring you then. I’m deeply sorry. Hopefully the next little girl you fight will be more fun to beat up.”

His elbow and his knee slammed down hard at the same time, catching her foot and breaking her lower leg like her bones were made of glass. In that moment she remembered that leg bones hurt the most to break because they took the most weight to break.

She tried to wrench her leg back, but he grabbed her opposite knee before she could escape and dislocated it. She fell to the floor like a broken doll. He might as well have snapped those limbs off.

“There’s no reason we had to fight each other. This is a pointless squabble between children.”

“Are you saying we should become friends?”

“Being treated like a deity, far away from everyone else, almost like me...”

“You’re a genius and you can’t think of anything other than that old cliche?” He was such a poor actor trying to appear as an empathic person. “You’re right, the reason I was killing people was because I secretly wanted friends all along. I’m a big old sweetheart, but don’t tell anyone it’s embarrassing.”

“Nanami. Killing each other… would just be boring. You can’t do anything as a corpse.”

“Sorry, I don’t like you. I don’t like nice people, or playing nice. My only friends are the destitute, the vile…”  
Her only friend was death.  
She closed her eyes and smiled happily as she waited for the scythe to fall upon her.

She looked up and saw overgrown weeds wrapping themselves around Kamukura, holding her back.

“I have to do this.”

“No you don’t!” Mtasuda said, fighting against Kamukura with everything he had in his scrawny body. “You’re really going to kill her? You’re going to kill someone who’s been sick her entire life? That’s no better than killing Komaeda.”

Oh, he was seeing someone else overlapped with her as well. It was like they were both fighting someone else instead of the person in front of them.  
How lonely.

“Don’t you know? I won’t let any sickness take Komaeda away from me, because I’m the only one allowed to kill him. He’d be happy, if it was me…I’d hold his hand as he went.”

“Yeah, that’s totally not something Junko would say. You’re doing a real good job of convincing me of your mental health right now.”

“Yasuke…”

“I’m the one you should want to kill! If you kill anyone it should be me! I’m not trying to save anyone, or protect anything this is just my own self centeredness talking. If you want to hurt something hurt me.”

“Even if I wanted to I…”

Nanami took advantage of that to crawl away. She dragged her useless feet behind her and moved across the floor. Oh, why was she doing that? Why was she running away? It was almost like she wanted to live.

She pushed her hands on the ground, and did a handstand to walk instead.  
Her legs broken as they were just sort of hung there uselessly.  
They would probably be better by tomorrow.

Walking upside down on her hands made the blood rush to her head, and Nanami was already woozy, so slowly she felt herself falling forward. Perhaps, this was the death she was always waiting for.

She was always waiting for death?  
No, that seemed wrong.  
She spent all this time waiting to start living.

When she regained consciousness, she was on someone’s back.S he thought it was Rantaro for a foolish moment, but then realized it was Medaka.

“I’m so sorry…”

Why are you apologizing?  
She tried to say the words but she coughed instead.  
Unlike the fake apologies of her parents this one felt real.  
They passed by an electronics store and she saw Rnataro’s flickering face on the monitor.  
She heard his words.

“I want to save my sister. The whole world can go die for all I care. That's the kind of man I am."

Big brother.  
You never stopped being my brother.  
I haven’t thanked you for that.  
But, I’m not particularly grateful to you for that.  
So even now I don’t intend to say so.  
I would have been fine if mom and dad had killed me back then.  
I would have been fine with it.

So please.  
Don’t kill yourself to save me.  
Don’t kill my only brother.

Her words were useless though.  
God did not hear her prayers because he was too busy punishing herself.  
And the brother that she loved had killed himself a long time ago.  
He killed himself every day.  
Just like she died from her illness every day.

And yet.  
Just a little bit longer.  
Those words of hope would not leave her.  
A tiny, frail, and petty hope, just like her.

[GOD PUNISHES THE ELITE PART ONE END]


	28. Grotesque

 

 **GOD PUNISHES THE ELITE PART TWO  
** **CHAPTER ONE: GROTESQUE  
** **DAY FIVE: PART ONE**

Rafflesia, a genius of parasitic flowering plants.   
A plant with no stems, leaves or roots of its own. A parasite that can only grow with a suitable host. The flowers look and smell like rotting flesh.   
  
Corpse flower.   
A flower that could only bloom among corpses.   
That was what they called her. A little girl with red hair that had lightened a few shades to pink from the shock alone, who they found like a shy and quiet flower living among the corpses of her family.   
  
“Did you hate your brother?”   
  
“...No.”   
  
Zenkichi Hitomi asked her question after question. She sounded like a concerned adult, but Emukae had heard that voice before. The voice of an adult pretending to be kind. Like when teachers saw her coming to school covered in injuries, but they only asked because they did not want to feel like they were doing nothing. They wanted the appearance of being kind to a child, but none of them actually wanted to get involved besides past their shallow pity.   
  
“So why did you kill him?”   


“I…” 

  
Repulsive.   
Horrible.   
Grotesque. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“It was an accident.”   
  
“It was random tragedy.”   
  
“It wasn’t my fault.”   
  
“I had a normal family until that day.” 

A normal family.   
Just her and her brother.   
  
Her brother was quiet, and distant, and he did not know how to take care of a house. She was the one who had to pick bottles up off the floor and tie off trash bags, but it was the job of the woman of the house to take care of them.  
  
Sometimes her brother got mad at her and lectured her, but it was normal for siblings to fight. Besides, her big brother was taking care of her all alone. She knew how hard it must have been. 

 _“You don’t listen to a single thing I say!_ ”   
  
_“You're too stupid to talk to when you're drinking like this.“_  
  
That was why every night she prayed for big brother’s happiness. 

 _“Not a single person in the world would blame me for getting drunk if they saw this is what I came home to every night! This house filled with garbage, I told you to clean!”_  
  
Everyday.   
The scame screams. The same scene.   
A normal family life. 

 _“You useless man, you can't do a single thing good for this family."_ _  
__  
__“You're more poisonous than any booze. Quit acting like you're innocent."_  
  
Her brothe was kind to her. Unlike those two loud people who were always fighting, her brother just ignored her. He never once did anything to hurt her.   
Sometimes he even reached out to touch her on the head. When they were much younger, she remembered the two of them working hard to plant a garden together. They did not get to play together anymore, but that was because big brother was busy at college.  

 Emukae only knew harsh hands, when other children bullied her or when her teacher slapped her for not talking even when she was called on in class. Because she did not know. In those moments where her brother reached out to touch her, she thought he was being gentle. 

 _“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Um…”  
_  
_“Silent as usual does your brain even work? I told you not to cause trouble at school. Can’t you just be normal? If they get suspicious they’re going to blame me. How did you give birth to such a daughter?"  
  
 _Her brother really was doing his best to watch her. She was the child who did not know anything, she could not cook him meals, or keep the house clean, and barely knew how to interact with other people. He cooked her meals when those two loud people were fighting.   
  
_"She's disgusting because she looks like you. I can't stand having my face mixed up with yours."_  
  
  _“I’m not a violent person.  I'm not angry. There’s just something wrong with you, it unnerves people.  I just wanted a normal family, so why did you have to give birth to those two brats."  
  
"It's your fault! I married such a worthless person."  _  
  
“I’m sorry. I’ll apologize so…” It felt like the few times Emukae did speak, all that came out of her mouth was apologies. She had the most fun when her brother was being silent around her. She was sure he was just ignoring her again then, but that was the only time she got to be around somebody else without hearing cruel words.   
  
Not just her brother, but kids at school, and teachers too, everyone acted as if there was something off about her. She wondered if she had been born a more normal girl, would they constantly feel the need to treat her this way in order to correct her?   
  
She would practice. She would practice making eye contact with others, smiling at appropriate times, taking care of herself, and then big brother would go back to smiling again.   
  
She wished.   
They could be a family!   
That was right,  _family_ , that vague and uncertain word that she did not know if it existed or not.   
If only it was just her and big brother.   
  
Big brother was big enough now that neither of those loud voices messed with him. He could easily push them off. Sometimes, she wished big brother would protect her too, just like that, but most of the time he just silently watched her. He turned away and ignored her like it was none of his business. But, he never... he never hurt her...   
She wished.   
  
One day her wish came true!   
Standing in the middle of the kitchen her big brother embraced her. “I’m so sorry. Let’s be a real family from now on.”   
  
Her brother had a change of heart! Her plan to act more normal must have worked.   
The voices were gone and she was no longer kept up at night by the sound of some woman crying.   
Her family was just her and her brother just like she thought all along. 

“ _Let’s plant a garden together! I want to show you a whole field of flowers, Emukae!”_ _  
__  
_ She wondered if it was weird to care so much for her only brother. Well, he was the only family she had, and she was just a little girl, so it made sense she would depend on him.   
  
_Big brother makes promises for all these fun things we’re going to do together, but he doesn’t have to bother! I’m happy just being next to big brother!_ _  
__  
__I tried gardening today, but I cut my finger! Big brother bandaged it up and kissed it all better. It’s the first time somebody else bandaged one of my wounds. I’ll learn how to be better at gardening. I want to show big brother those flowers for sure._ _  
__  
__(The smell is so bad. I took so many showers)._ _  
__  
__Brother’s teaching me to read! He doesn’t get angry anymore when I make mistakes! He’s always so patient with me, and quietly waits as I read along._ _  
__  
__Brother is so silly. While we were reading together he laughed so much just like a little kid. It was so annoying, but being alone with big brother, in the quiet reading a book, that was all I wanted._ _  
__  
__I planted a whole bunch of seeds. I’m gonna grow flowers for big brother. I want to see them with him!_ _  
__  
__It’s so hot! I asked big brother for some ice cream, but he made me go to the store and fetch it for him. Big brother doesn’t leave the house at all, lately! I think he’s starting to turn into a NEET. Maybe he’s just worried about me? He stopped going to college and came home so he can take care of his sister. Being a big brother is a full time job!_  
  
She stopped caring about the fact that she did not have a mother, or a father, because the few months she spent living alone with her big brother were more than enough to make up for that.   
  
(  _I don’t like the heat. It makes big brother smell bad.)  
_  
She was happy.   
_  
__(Bugs.)_ _  
__  
_ She was always smiling.   
_  
__(So many bugs)._ _  
__  
_ She realized what family was. It was just normal, it was ordinary.   
_  
__(I’m getting so hungry. Why is big brother such a terrible cook?)  
_  
It was a bunch of people who you were so used to being around, that you just do normal things all day and think,  _oh, that was boring. Oh, that was the same as always._ That was all it took to be a family, it was nothing special at all. 

 _I’m almost done gardening big brother!_ _  
_ _When I’m done I’ll show it to you!_ _  
_ _A field of flowers!_ _  
_ _You love flowers, right?_

“Did you hate your brother?”   
  
“N-no, I loved him. I just wanted…” She tried to open her mouth to tell Hitomi about the flowers, but the words did not come out. 

HItoyoshi Hitomi looked at her like the thing she was speaking to was not even a child. “Then, why did you kill him?”   
  
Rafflesia bloomed. The smell of rotting filled her empty nasal cavities. Even though she did not want to remember, flowers bloomed in between the wrinkles of her brain that was just a few more ounces of rotten meat inside of her.   
  
“Emukae, stoooo-”   
  
A kitchen knife.   
It was so old, it looked rusted.   
She rose it up in the air.   
  
“I never wanted to hurt you, okay? Listen, mom and dad were really rough on me. You never met them. It wasn’t my fault, so-”   
  
She plunged it into big brother.   
Over and over again, until his blood became more rust on the blade.   
Perhaps on that day she really did intend to just kill her parents, but her older brother who always ignored her, who never did anything to her, kind or unkind got caught up in it too.   
  
She remembered the feeling of cold wet blood sunken into her brother’s shirt, after he embraced her on that day, and told her everything was going to be alright from now on, but that memory was just a lie. She had hugged her brother's body long after he had 

“It’s alright big brother, I’ll plant a garden over where mom and dad were buried. Then we can be a real family! We’ll look at the flowers together. The tears she felt at that time, were not her big brother’s, but rather her own. “I’ll show you, a whole field of flowers.”  
  
Her mother and father were buried in the backyard. A shallow grave was dug for them. They were buried in a patch of land that was used as an old, dried up garden, a little bit after she was born.  Mixed among the dirt carelessly thrown over their half buried bodies, and the ribs that were now poking out of their rotted away chests, there were several flowers. The bodies no longer had eyes, or facial features, as the birds had thoroughly plucked the soft meat away from their skulls. That girl had just bought a few packets of seeds at the store, so flowers of all kinds grew in between their bones. They grew with twisted stems, curling themselves around individual bones. Their stomachs were burst open, and most of the organs spilled out, but the soft bits of flesh had been pecked away a long time ago.   
  
It looked like both parents were disemboweled but instead of organs, what spilled out were beautiful flowers of all different kinds of colors. Her brother’s body which had been kept inside and moved around all this time was far worse, there was no trace of anything human left in that body, it was pitch black.   
  
“Grotesque-”   
  
That was what the officer who found the scene after being called in about the smell said. A girl like a single flower blooming among corpses. A girl who once she was born, her whole family began to rot. A girl, who could not enjoy the sweet smell of flowers, because she belonged amongst, swamps, and bogs, and peat, and moss, and poison flowers, and everything that decayed slowly.   
  
Emukae felt herself kicked to the floor by Hitomi. “You’re the one who killed him. You have to face the truth, or I can’t help you! Why did you live with him for months after the fact? You have to tell me why-”

_Help her?_

_  
_ This lady never intended on helping her from the beginning. Emukae looked up with pathetic eyes. “Doctor, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t play with my brother’s corpse. It wasn’t a delusion. It was all  an accident.. Everything I touch with these hands, whether living or non-living, organic or inorganic, they all rot away. No matter how much I tried to pet a puppy or hug a kitten they all became rotten dead meat.”   
  
Emukae still remembered, lonely with a big brother that ignored her, and a house where she had to be quiet or she would be hit, she sometimes played with puppies and kittens in the alleyways. She brought them home, only to realize, how fragile life was. If she did not take care of them properly, or feed them, or if she let them get hurt, they died far too easily. She started to wonder why they were even alive, and why was she?   
  
Emukae looked up and her face looked entirely different from the girl who had killed her parents while smiling, and played with her big brother’s corpse. “Doctor, should I die too?”   
  
Children learn at young ages to tell lies.   
When she realized she had no parents, her illusion of a normal family could never happened.   
She could no longer be a normal little girl.   
So she pretended they were never there. It was a garden out back.   
When she killed her brother she forgot about it.   
So, she told another lie and played with his corpse pretending he was still alive. 

And at this moment, unable to handle the scorn of the doctor in front of her she lied again.    
  
“It wasn’t my fault. It was all an accident! I didn’t know he was going to they were going to rot away when I touched him. It all happened yesterday, and I got scared, I thought everybody would think I was a murderer so I didn’t call for help…” 

The next moment she touched her face to wipe her tears, and she felt a horrible burning underneath her eyes. Emukae told lie after lie, but this one suddenly became true.   
  
From wiping her tears away, the bags under her eyes acquired that distinctive rotten look, and ever since that day everything she touched even her own body whether living or non-living, organic or inorganic, would slowly start to rot away.   
  
Emukae was not punished for her crime because of her lies, but she was not saved either. The Kurokami foundation gave her money to live, and raised her as another one of their sponsored abnormals. She was told strictly to hide herself and stay away from others, so she did not make any friends at school. She was mocked for her smell but those who mocked her were quickly dealt with.   
  
Zombie Girl.   
  
That was what others called her. Until her first year of middle school, she lived a life that was only half alive. She was always smiling. She felt like if she stopped smiling, she might cry.   
  
Grotesque.   
That was what she was.   
That was how she got an idea, she should just try living to see how fucked up she could be.   
She wanted to embody the rotten zombie that others saw her as. She should stop being a girl and become a monster. 

One day in middle school she played around on the rooftop thinking of her brother. She was rather athletic, but only because she had so much free time. She did not even need to attend school really and only did so when she felt like it. In a handstand, she played on top of the fence they put up to keep kids from jumping off.   
  
“I don’t get it? Did my big brother kill my parents? Oh, or maybe I killed my parents and big brother called me a monster? Or maybe I killed my parents and big brother tried to defend himself? Or maybe big brother killed my parents and I got scared and kill him? Hmmm? Hmmm? Who died and when, it's all so confusing. It's like that old cliche, I've told too many lies, ahahahaha!" 

The brother she killed, was he was good big brother or a bad one?   
  
“Ahahahahaha! I get it! It just doesn’t matter whether he was good or bad, cuz I killed him.” Realizing it was meaningless either way, she laughed, feeling relieved. “I can kill big meanies and kind people just the same. Hmmm, when you get right down to it, someone like me really shouldn’t be allowed to live.”   
  
She was a liar who had gotten away with murder after all, without feeling a hint of remorse. She jumped back up on her feet and held her hands wide at her sides. Why wasn’t she sad? Why was she smiling?   
  
“Ah, I get it. It just doesn’t matter. Nobody will ever be happy.”   
  
She raised a foot in the air, and spun around, dancing on the absolute edge of the chainlink fence. “Kind people, meanies, big brother was never going to be happy either way so why does he give a shit that he died? No… not me either. Neither of us will ever be happy, will we?”   
  
She leaned too much to one side, and let herself fall off the edge.   
Suddenly out of nowhere, a boy dressed in all black reached up and took her hand. He dragged her back from the edge, and both of them fell back onto the roof together. 

『Mukae-chan, why did you try to jump like that?』  
  
His voice irritated her. For the first time in her life, that child told the truth just because she wanted him to shut up. “I killed my mother and father, that’s why.” Well she might have. She did not remember exactly. She was even beginning to forget there was a point in time where her hands weren’t acidic.   
  
That was right, her rotten hands, even with his skin slowly starting to burn that boy still had not let go of her. 

『Ah, I see. Well no big deal.』  
  
That boy, that weird boy, the one who knew absolutely nothing about her.   
Smiled at her more sincerely.   
Listened to her more.   
Than the ‘adults’ who had come to help her. 

『If they made Mukae-chan cry, they were jerks who deserved it anyway!』

Until that boy pointed it out to her, she did not even realize she was crying.   
She thought she was smiling.

She was always smiling.   
But in front of him, she could not smile.   
  
She could not smile, so that boy smiled at her instead.   
He remembered her name.   
He frantically stopped her.   
He chased after her.   
He saved her.   
He smiled for her.   
He smiled in the same way her imaginary big brother smiled at her.   
  
This was the same boy that everybody at school called a failure. This boy was no failure, she thought. Nothing about him needed to change. Exactly as he was. She loved him. She wanted him to always smile at her, just like that. 

  
  
🦔 

  
  
Emukae saw a revolving lantern in front of her eyes.   
No, wait, the world was just spinning because her head rolled off of her shoulders. What was she again? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead. 

  
What would her senpai do in this situation? How should she make the world stop spinning?   
  
_“Kumagawa-san, I have a headache.”_

 

『 _Just cut your head off! Then it’ll stop hurting._ 』   


Senpai gave terrible advice. He always seemed like he wanted to detach himself from the world like that, and laugh in the sky.   
  
She found it hard to smile like this. Her head was dizzy. And, an upside down smile turned into a frown. SHe could not tell if she was smiling her frowning. Suddenly, her head stopped. Her hands moved on their own, and lifted her head back to her shoulders.   
  
Her head was severed at the neck, but no blood came out of it. Paint will dry eventually. Bodies will decompose eventually. Flowers as beautiful as they are, will always rot. That was why she thought the rotting was beautiful instead of the flowers. In and out, in and out, she pulled the needle through the skin of her neck all the way around in a circle until her head was attached again.   
  
Fruit tasted sweeter when it was just about to rot, anyway. Flowers could not grow if other things did not rot to fertilize the soil. Yet, everybody looked at her like she was some ugly thing. She could die any time with a body like this, cold to the touch, without a beating heart, and yet if she died she knew no one would cry for her.   
  
“M-m-m-m-mukaaaaaeeeee!”

 

Not one single person.  
Not one single tear.   
She would die, and it would not mattter.   
She was never going to be happy anyway.   
Nothing was lost, nothing was subtracted.   
  
“I can’t even use my talent to stitch your body back together. I was s-so careless! I can’t even. Not one thing. I can’t do a single thing for anybody other than myself.”

  
Mikan was crying so much that she could not see through the tears.   
Tsumiki Mikan.   
A crybaby.   
Her tears like acid.   
She never once cried when she was sad. Her tears made others feel sad.   
Some animals wore bright colors to warn predators of the danger.   
Some cornered prey made themselves look larger.

Tsumiki made herself some small, crying, thing.   
That way it would not be her fault.   
No matter what, the other person was just a bully picking on a crying girl.    
That was why.   
That was why.   
Tsumuki MIkan did not cry.   
  
Then what was this?   
Tears like acid burning through her skin.   
Her name called out again and again.   
A feeling like a cold blast of water right to her face.   
Flowers that only opened when it rained.   
A lump of rotten meat, caught in her throat.   
Big fat childish tears that twinkled like glittering stars.   
  
She wanted to reach out and wipe the tears from underneath Mikan’s eyes, but she knew the moment she touched her she would die. It was like a fairy tale where the moment the princess realizes they were in love, they disappear.   
  
She could not comfort Mikan, or anybody else. She could not ever become medicine, so she said something poisonously rude instead. “Hmm, whatcha talking about? I’m right here. Jeez, Mikan you have a nervous breakdown over every little thing.” 

  
“Ah-” Mikan gasped and suddenly reached out to both of Emukae’s cheeks to confirm it was real, and then the next moment in shock she began to shake Emukae wildly. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! N-not over everything. Do not.”   
  
“Do too! You cried when I pointed out your shoe was untied.”   
  


“S-still. I think watching your friend’s head fall off is a good reason to have a nervous breakdown!”   
  
“Woah! Woah! Stop shaking me my head’s going to fall off again!”   
  
“Good! Th-that’s what you get for making me worry.”   
  
“Mikan you suck at being a nurse. I guess I was wrong for saying you can’t be a minus because you’re too talented.”   
  
Tsumiki MIkan collapsed to her knees in front of Emukae.   
What a clumsy girl.   
“No, I’m a good nurse. That’s the only thing that’s good about me. If I’m not a nurse then what am I?”   
  
“A rotten orange, I guess.” Emukae said, touching her cheek and causing her skin to burn slightly.   
  
“You weren’t supposed to answer that question seriously! It was introspective! Rhetorical! Open-ended! You were supposed to quietly think about the answer.”   
  
“Awe, but I hate thinking.” Mukae said, her brain was already rotten enough as it was. She wondered why Mikan had not asked her about the zombie thing. Oh, it was probably because she was already used to Kumagawa reviving from the dead. “Well, if you’re a rotten orange, if you’re completely useless, then we’ll get along better! So I think it’s fine if you’re that way.”   
  
“Stop sounding nice when you’re just bullying me!” Mikan whined as she finally got up. The girl she had been so afraid of losing one moment ago, the annoyance she had gotten accustomed to over the past few days, stayed there like a thorn lodged in her heart. “I don’t want to be friends with a person like you anyway.”   
  
“Really? I thought you were so desperate for attention that anybody would do.”   
  
“I’m not desperate! I just like attention, and need it every second of every day, and when I don’t get it I feel like I’m going to die, and when I do get it I don’t feel anything at all.” Mikan described what was totally not a desperate person. “You don’t know how to talk to other people.”   
  
“That’s because I’m weird.”   
  
Mikan grumbled a little more, then suddenly grabbed Emukae by the wrist again. They were getting used to traveling, linking hand and wrist like that so neither of them would lose the other. Emukae looked a little shocked as she was tugged forward. 

 

Mikan asked a question without looking back. “Are you sad?”   
  
She wasn’t.   
If she was sad, she would be sad about everything.   
  
“It’s fun being a zombie! I get to eat brains! Ah, but don’t worry, I won’t eat yours, you’re too stupid Mikan.”   
  
“Are you sad?”   
  
“If I feel like being naugty I can bite people all I want. Is that what you want? Do you want me to bite you?”   
  
“Are you sad?”   
  
She wasn’t.   
  
“I was never going to be happy to begin with, Mikan.” Emukae smiled, even though it did not matter anymore. Her body did not even produce tears. She did not need to keep smiling. But, it was all she knew how to do. “Just like Matsuda-kun, I knew he was never going to love me back from the start. That’s why it doesn’t hurt.”   
  
If all the nerves are dead. If the flesh was peeled away and the nerves were ripped out.  If there were no bones underneath the flesh and therefore there was nothing to break.If the heart stopped beating there was no heartache. If her brain was just rotten meat, she did not need to think anymore.  If everything, everything, everything, was going to rot away one day whether it was happy or sad, whether it was alive or dead, then it did not matter to begin with. Then there was no reason to be hurt.   
  
Everything was dying. Everything was already dead.   
That was why, it was silly to mourn one life.   
Laughable, even.   
Instead of crying, she should laugh.   
  
Mikan’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance. Emukae decided she liked the hostility on Mikan’s face, more than she liked all of the cute faces she made trying to convince others she was a good girl.   
  
“Why do you even like that guy so much?”   
  
“Because, one time I bumped into him before class and he took my hand and helped me up.”   
  
“That’s not a good reason at all! Stop reading so much manga! Kumagawa is a bad example!“

“Why do you like Enoshima?  Did you fall for her because she flashed you with her huge boobs?” 

  
“D-don’t make me sound like I’m some trashy girl!”   
  
Of course Mikan was sad when she died. Emukae finally figured it out. Some small part of Mikan still wanted to heal people. Which meant, she wanted herself to heal. She had not given up on that the same way that Emukae did. 

  
Mikan flinched when she saw Chisa refuse to help Nanami. She was hesitant when Emukae tried to persuade her to attack Nanami.   
  
Emukae had been like that once, so she knew. She once wanted nothing more than for her wounds to be fixed up, and kissed by someone else. She once wanted to heal, and be normal again.   
  
She thought she could return.   
The Emukae who never had anything happen to her.   
The pure her.   
She thought even with everything that happened to her she could go back and have a normal life. But in the end that was just the delusion of a child playing around with a corpse. Those dreams themselves were rotten.   
  
Tsumiki MIkan, her desire to be forgiven, her desire to forgive others, as warped as it was probably came from some genuine place. She still wanted to heal people. Her ideal self would be able to work tirelessly to heal others selflessly. If she could, she would be that person.   
  
She wanted to be medicine.   
Emukae wanted to be poison.   
  
Mikan treated her own wounds. She cleaned them, bandaged them up, and hid them away.   
Emukae let them get infected. Her limbs got so rotten they fell off, so she had to sew them back on.   
  
Those tears were not affection for Emukae. They were kindness. Mikan always played the victim, but maybe that was just because some small part of her did not want to hurt others. She did not want to be the reason people were in pain.   
  
How kind, shameless, always stumbling around, self absorbed, and yet so so kind.   
  
She could have chosen either path, but Mikan tried at least. She wanted to be medicine. Even if she fell short again and again of the good person she wanted to be.   
  
“Did you really kill your parents?”   
  
Mikan asked her.   
  
(I don’t know). “Yep, yep! I did. It was fun!” 

 

“You shouldn’t have done that.”   
  
“Hmmm, but didn’t you kill your parents in the end anyway? Just because your not-girlfriend with the huge fake boobs told you too?”   
  
“This isn’t about me!” Mikan said, suddenly blushing as if Emukae had pointed out something really embarrassing.   
  
“I thought you made everything about yourself.”   
  
“Noooooo!” Mikan blushed even worse now. She looked like she was about to catch fire. Emukae felt a little bad, making a girl who was already covered in wounds even more red.   
  
“Mikan, you tried to be a good person didn’t you? You tried to put up with what your parents did to you, you tried to become someone who could heal others instead of hurting them, but in the end it all turned out to be the same didn’t it? You weren’t going to be happy either way.” Emukae said, as she was tugged along by Mikan’s hand still. “You’re tainted medicine now. But, I think you should have been poison from the start. If you had defended yourself you would not have to cry so much.”   
  
Emukae took a deep breath. “And…”   
And.   
“And they don’t deserve your kindness.”   
  
“I promise I’ll never be kind to a person like you,” Mikan did not realize Emukae’s sincerity. She thought they were still joking around.   
  
“Really? I’m so happy!” 

 

🦔

 

“Are you sure talking to Kurokami-san, and Nanami-san is a good idea? We just tried to stab them a few minutes ago.”   
  
“Isn’t it normal to stab your friends every once in awhile? How else will you know you’re friends?”   
  
“No, it’s not normal at all! And you don’t have friends anyway so quit talking like you know something.” 

 

“Mikan is being tsundere.”  
  
“No, I’m not. You can’t just call it tsundere every time someone gets angry at you.”   
  
“Mikan is being Mikandere.”   
  
“W-what does that even mean?”   
  
Emukae was in a good mood, because Mikan was actually arguing back for once instead of just apologizing. That was what being a good friend was, a knife in her side, and a thorn in her heart.   
  
When they found Nanami and Medaka they were sitting in front of the broken pharmacy that had already been raided several times. The designers of this game really needed to program in a few more locations! Oh wait, that’s me.   
  
Medaka was wrapping bandages around one of Nanami’s legs, while Nanami fussed. She had already set it as much as she could on an improvised job. “You. Did you listen at all, girl? I said it would heal by tomorrow.”   
  
“Wah? You really heal that fast? That’s kind of unfair…”   
  
“You are the last person who should complain about things being unfair.”   
  
Kurokami Medaka played through life with all the cheat codes enabled. The moment she remembered that, her head sank. “I’m so sorry.”   
  
“You’ve apologized and yet you still continue to be annoying. Come children never learn,” Nanami said, as strict as ever.   
  
“You! Girl! You never call me by my name! I already told you to call me Medaka-chan. People are going to think we’re not friends if you keep referring to me like that.”   
  
“Then they would be correct in thinking so. What’s the problem?”   
  
“Meeedaaaaakaaaa-chaaaaaaaan!” 

  
“Super-Annoying-Girl-Chan. How about that? That’s your name!”   
  
“You gave me a nick-name? Now we can be friends for real.” 

  
“No, we can’t even be friends in any lie, or delusion on your part.”

 

Nanami, the same girl who tore through all of her classmates like they were paper, and ripped off Emukae’s head calling her nothing more than a weed, was now bickering with Kurokami Medaka like a normal child might.   
  
Emukae told Mikan not to tell Mikan a single thing about Nanami’s true self.   
When Mikan asked her why the girl smiled and said:  _It’s more fun that way._ _  
__  
__GET A MORE ORIGINAL LINE!_ _  
_ Mikan wanted to scream that in her face but she was too unsure of herself. She just thought of the witty comeback instead, she was much better at thinking of them then actually saying them.   
  
When Medaka sensed their presence (which was not that hard because Emukae was a loud whisperer, or more likely she had no idea how to be quiet) she instinctively raised a hand in front of Nanami.   
  
Nanami smiled, a sickly smile. “Oh, have you two come to kill me again? I was getting bored waiting for you.” 

 

“Umm… about before!” Mikan really did feel bad about that. She was no better than Miss Yukizome, refusing to help a sick patient. She had killed her own patients in the past, and even her own family members and yet, she still felt this was wrong. “I-I wasn’t trying to stab you, I just tripped and fell forward while holding a scalpel. Hehe… I’m such a clumsy mess and I got soooooo careless…!”   
  
“You suck at lying, let me try. Mikan didn’t really want to stab you, but I convinced her. I told her all the cool kids were doing it these days. She’s really vulnerable to peer pressure. She’d do anything if she thought it would make people like her.”   
  
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop making me sound so shallow!”   
  
“Have you tried being less shallow of a person? Have you? Have you?” 

  
Nanami stared drily at both of them. Dried out eyes. They looked like glass that had cracks. Jewels that had obvious scratches on the surface, ruining their beauty. Her eyes looked, so tired. “Not funny, not funny at all, to me. If you’re going to lie to me, at least make me laugh.” 

 

Medaka who looked like she was crunching some imaginary, aimless equation, only she could see suddenly snapped back to reality. “Oh, so you both feel sorry for Nanami and you’re going to try to help her now?”   
  
“Not funny at all, just sad.” Nanami sighed. “What does the world look like through your eyes?”   
  
“Hmm, it’s really pretty! Why do you ask?” Pretty, and kind of slow she was noticing. “Well. Who hasn’t had a few friends try to stab them every once in awhile?”   
  
“Why is this a normal occurrence for you people? You’re making the ultimate despair feel sad for you!” Mikan said her eyes already watering.   
  
“Mmm, besides Emukae is kind of familiar.”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
“She smells like you I guess.”   
  
“Don’t go smelling people without permission, rude girl.”   
  
“Sorry, sorry.”   
  
If Nanami was painted blue with sickness, then Emukae was a pure red. It was like that.   
Nanami, named after the flowers on the branch that eventually grew into fruit.   
The girl who wore a flower in her hair.   
The girl who swallowed flowers to cover up the smell of sickness.   
  
She was a corpse, but she was something worse than a corpse, a thing that resembled a corpse. No longer human. Her skin and her lips turned blue from all the sickness underneath her, it was like blue flowers blooming from underneath her skin. She stood in a field of flowers. She imagined herself there, flowers, just like her, little flowers. They bloomed only to wilt away slowly. Perennial flowers that were stepped on, and covered in snow, and kept blooming. Flowers that were picked, and had their petals torn up and tossed carelessly into the air.   
  
She was like the flowers because her whole life she had been locked away in the dark so she could not bloom. She was plucked and kept away from everybody else, and raised to sit still, and look beautiful, and smell nice. And she never wanted to be a flower. Flowers never wished they were flowers, they wanted legs to run around with, and hands to touch others, and mouths to laugh with.   
  
They were beautiful but that beauty only made them a thing to be owned.   
Only ever a flower, and not a person. Not a child.   
She had nothing to do in that room so she grew flowers, and her brother he promised to take her to see the flowers. Outside was where her brother was, and where the flowers grew, and at night she dreamt about flowers. She slept more than she was awake because there was nothing for her when she woke up. She wished she could fall asleep with petals over her eyelids to dream of flowers every night. 

And she hated weeds. They choked the life out of flowers. They got to be alive, they got to live, and they were just a waste of life. She was envious, of weeds that grew vigorously, weeds that grew selfishly, because she could never be vigorous nor selfish. Weeding became her hobby.   
  
The garden was a beautiful place to return to. Innocent. Warm. A place where you could be naked and not feel any shame at all. A place where the first man and the first woman lived. The first humans once lived in a garden, and she wanted to return to that, a place where she could be human.   
  
This girl was already rotten. She already wilted. She smelled like a corpse flower.   
  
She was a poison, she would kill everything that grew there. The grass at her feet turned yellow. The fruit was already rotten before it was even ripe. The vines died and looked like dried up brown rope. The weeds were rampant. They grew everywhere. Their roots choked out all the other plants. The soil dried up and became sand. The flowers were stepped on. They were decapitated.   
  
Any berrry that grew from her would be poisoned. She looked like she belonged in some swamp, or bog, she looked like she should be half buried in the mud, with moss growing over her face.   
  
She was everything withered up, ugly, and decaying about the world. She was the reason it went, from seed to flower, to fruit, to rot. She was why the rules of life were so fundamentally sad.   
  
A poisonous flower.   
Nanami felt nothing, nothing but envy for other people.   
This was the first time a person actually managed to irritate her.   
  
She hated dirty things. It became like her disease.She had so many diseases. She liked her pure white kimono. Her hair tied up neatly behind her. Her pale skin without a single blemish. She liked a spotless room. And she hated. Dirt. Filthiness. Bacteria. Green. Sickness. Touching. Skin. Exposure. Heat. Fever. Sweat. Fluids. All of it, all of it, all of it.   
  
“You’re too weird,” Nanami spat, unladylike.   
  
“You’re too normal,” Emukae smiled back at her. Besides, she already knew that Nanami would continue playing the helpless sick girl and go along with whatever Medaka wanted. She was familiar with the type. “Medaka-chan, if you become my friend I’ll tell you all about Kumagawa-san.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yeah, we can gossip about him, and say terrible things behind his back.”   
  
“That doesn’t sound very nice.” 

  
“It’s fine, it’s fine. If Kumagawa-san were here he’d just say.  _I’m happy that girls are talking about me at all. I thought every girl on the planet was ignoring the fact that I existed._ Or something like that.”   
  
“That impression was so accurate it was almost scary.”   
  
Emukae waved her hands through the air. “Ah, ah, you should be able to understand him already. You’re both the same kind of altruist…”   
  
“Huh?” Medaka thought her and Kumagawa were as different as night and day. That was why they had to hate each other. They had to be enemies. Even when they were friends, they were still trying to defeat one another.   
  
Nanami looked back at her with cool eyes. “I think what she’s getting at is like this. If a person were cursed by god to feel pain when somebody was suffering, and then they devoted the rest of their life to helping others would they be a truly good person.”   
  
“Hmmm…”   
  
“On the reverse, if a person was cursed by god to feel pain every time someone around them was happy, and they devoted the rest of their life to causing pain to others would they be a truly bad person?”   
  
“Are there really girls like that? They both sound kind of shallow.”   
  
Nanami sighed. “You have the self awareness of a blind person looking in the mirror.”   
  
“Well, I just don’t think I’m that great. So I don’t want to think about myself that much. Other humans are much more wonderful than me, don’t you think?” Medaka said as cheerfully as always, as she looked back to Emukae and Mikan.   
  
“Well, yeah it’s basically that. Because Kurokami-san is a good person, she’ll forgive anything. Hey, hey, Mikan if you want to be forgiven you should go ask her now.”   
  
“Th-this is bullying,” Mikan shrunk away.   
  
“I guess you don’t want to be forgiven that badly. Well, even back in middle school when Kumagawa-san and Kurokami-san fought every single day, she would forgive him. She’s soooo gooood. But you know, Kumagawa-san the bad guy, he was like that too.”

  
A scene she remembered. A scene that played over and over again in her mind, because when it happened in front of her, she was helpless, like she was just a character in a movie unable to do anything but sit in the background and watched.   
  
In her middle school days she wore thick gloves over her hands to prevent her fingers from touching anything. She recognized the signs. The only places where he was hurt was under his uniform jacket, on his arms, where he could hide it if he came to school. She only noticed because she knew what that was like, coming to school still covered in the bruises from last night.   
  
“Don’t look at me like that…” 

Kumagawa smiled at her the same as always, but she did not want to see that smile when both of his arms were covered in bandages. 

With her thick gloves on, she was careful not to touch his hand directly as she lifted him hand by the wirst. She had a cotton ball and was dabbling it over his knuckles. He had so many scars already, trying to treat his wounds at all seemed pointless and yet she quietly and diligently cleaned them.  
  
The two of them sat alone in the classroom. She was the only one who knew about it, because she used to get covered in those same marks too.   
  
“This happens every day. It’s hard to believe that somebody could bully you, Kumagawa-san.You seem like the type who would bully others instead.” 

Kumagawa simply kept smiling at her. 

“You’re setting a terrible example as a senpai. You’re covered in bruises that never go away, you don’t have any friends, you skip close. Hey, are you listening to me?”  
  
“Mukae-chan’s so cute. Don’t you know? I get into fights every day, just so I can have a cute girl patch me up and worry about me.” 

A girl like her tying up bandages on somebody else’s wounds. Emukae felt a little bit ridiculous. Kumagawa’s scarred up hands, the hands that looked like they could destroy anything, the hands that looked more fragile than anything else, the same hands that reached out to her that day. She did not want to see them break.   
  
“Kumagawa-san you don’t even like fighting.”   
  
“It’s true, I’m one of those bad boy types who secretly gets into fights with kittens in the rain. Have you fallen for me yet?”   
  
“No, it’s supposed to be ‘protects kittens from the rain’.”   
  
“You’re right, I am worried about you.”   
  
“Worried? A girl worrying about me? A girl has feelings towards me that aren’t complete disgust for my existence? Oh wow! Mukae-chan’s so cute, I love you so much my heart is going to break.” He kept spewing lies like normal, but that felt like the truth.   
  
Kumagawa Misogi, just by looking at him it felt like your heart was going to break. He was that kind of person. He played with the bandages she had just wrapped around his lower arm. “This is totally fine! I wasn’t even hurt! It’s not a problem.”   
  
“It is...Kumagawa-kun, why would anyone want to hurt you that bad? For what reason? You didn’t do anything wrong…”   
  
The kind boy who always smiled at her.   
The boy who always worried about her.   
The boy who talked to her every day.   
She could not imagine anybody hating him.   
She could not imagine that this hopelessly broken, incomplete, imperfect boy.   
Would not be enough for someone.   
  
Her hands were on him, like she was begging. She had no idea who she prayed to, if it was god, or the devil, but she was fine with either one if they listened to her.   
  
Kumagawa suddenly pushed her off. It was the first time she had ever seen him get angry. If she had stabbed him with a knife, he would have looked less betrayed, less hurt in that moment. “I’m fine!”   
  
He stood up hands hanging there at his side.   
His eyes, pools of clear blue, perhaps they were so blue because of all the times he had cried, or wanted to cry.    
  
“Even if no one else would ever forgive her, even if there’s no reason that would justify it… I forgive her.”   
  
She wanted to apologize to him. 

 _Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry about the blood in your mouth.  
_ _Sorry when you kiss her it feels like bleeding._

She wished it was her.  
She wished the boy had wanted to kill her.   
She couldn’t get the boy to kill her.   
Unrequited love. 

When she was younger, Emukae witnessed the story of a girl and a boy. It was viciously similiar, viciously similiar to Matsuda’s story. A story of two people. The girl broke the boy, and the boy forgave her. The boy was friendly, and never suspected people, or grew angry at people, and always smiled, and was a really good person, and no matter what she did would forgive her and more than anything came to like her.   
  
The girl who everyone liked, the girl who was popular, who was always kind to everyone, broke that thing. Emukae remembered seeing the look on that girl’s beautiful face. A self-satisfied look. The greatest feeling. That was what happiness looked like, probably, not that Emukae would know.   
  
And even after the irreplaceable real one was destroyed. Even after he had to become a fake. He had to become strong to keep living. When he was demolished by the person he liked, he still forgave her.   
  
And she was sick of forgiveness.   
Sick of healing, and comfort, and embraces and warmth.   
She did not want to forgive others or be forgiven.   
The expression on her face at the present moment was not a rotten smile, but a green, sick, nauseating expression like Nanami’s.   
  
Just once she let her true emotions slip out on accident.   
  
“I reaaaaaaally hate people who have nothing better to do then spend all their time begging for forgiveness.”   
  
And when she saw the look on Mikan’s face she almost regretted it.   
Almost.   
But even if she regretted the words, it was something she would never apologize for. 


	29. Human Relations

**GOD PUNISHES THE ELITE PART TWO  
CHAPTER TWO: DAY FIVE PART TWO**

If god is dead then who created man?  
It’s simple, man creates man. Humans are created by everyone around them, piece by piece. . On the other side, Humans are also destroyed by everyone around them, broken down piece by piece. 

One person destroys another.  
One person creates another.  
  
Everyone is in a constant state of falling apart, and everyone is in a constant state of being assembled. Hya-hya. I said something really smart. I’m not trying to sound smart though, leave that to the geniuses. That’s just the kind of story this is. If my sister is writing a love story, then I’m writing a human story.  
  
Kamukura Izuru, met a girl with stars in her eyes. Red lipstick that colored outside the lines of her lips like her smile was bleeding. Her shape was a perfect hourglass, and her figure was ethereal, she seemed to pull away when touched, to slip through their fingers, like sand through the hourglass. Her lips tasted like bubble gum, and cherry cola, and all the artificial flavors. Her eyes beautiful and satisfying, even if one could mistake the look in her eyes for loneliness or solitude, the whole of her glittered goal, like being dazzled all the time.  
  
Let’s go live like that every day. So many people to meet, so many people to love, so many people in this world. If he could live like that, then surely before long he would fall in love.  
  
He wanted to love.  
  
“Tedious, the lot of them. Is there a single person in this world capable of acting like a person?”  
  
He could not love people.Then, just one person. A single person, he wanted to admire someone so much that nothing else could enter his heart. He wanted to meet a single girl. He wanted to love so much he forgot about the world. He wanted to throw himself into the currents of fate, dive into rushing streams blindly, be pushed by the waters, and even drown.  
  
“Let’s hope this girl… isn’t another tedious one.”

The boy who is not moved by anything.Whether it is happy or sad, whether it is comedy or tragedy. Kamukura Izuru. Unlike Medaka who loved humans, he hated them. What he wanted was, what he desired for more than anything else was, just one person to prove him wrong. 

Kamukura who could not put the feelings he did not feel into words. Who felt a distinct lack of pain no matter how many times his body was cut open. He just wanted…  
Just.  
Wanted someone to completely understand him.  
They could hear his screaming, and hear his crying, while he remained quiet.  
Even a little bit would be okay.  
  
That was why - her.  
Someone exactly like him should have been able to hear what he was unable to say without words.   
  
“Kamukura-senpai!”  
  
When she arrived she immediately tackled him over. He fell back on a white bed, in an all white room, that looked more like a room set up on a stage for an audience to view rather than a room everyone lived in. Besides Enoshima Junko, the only source of color in the room was the bloodied bandages he kept in a pile in the corner.  
  
She was so lithe, so graceful at the hips that twitched over him in anticipation. Enoshima Junko, her body curved just like the ocean, and up close it was like a blast of salt water to the face. He observed her statuesque figure, the perfect construction of her body, and wondered what he would feel watching her fall apart. To smash that _kind of thing._ Catharsis. The best feeling ever. A feeling like the sun finally rose in his dark and dreary world. Enoshima Junko wanted to destroy the whole world but he thought he might be satisfied by destroying the girl right in front of him.  
  
Enoshima Junko, as she sat on his hips and her body was arched over his, stretching her spine to its limit. Her hair fell down over his face like golden rays. He felt like he could burn up in her, like a vampire exposed to sunlight. She wore a black uniform with rolled up sleeves, and a plaid skirt that hugged her thighs as closely as possible, but it did not feel like she was wearing those clothes, she was dressed up the same way one might dress up a store mannequin.  
  
A doll and not a girl, though her body weight against his certainly felt like a girl.  
  
“Eeeeeeee, Kamukura-senpai! Do you believe in fateful encounters?”  
  
“Humans live unrelated lives. They deny this and try to attach ideas like fate to make it seem more meaningful. An encounter between a girl and a boy, is just an encounter between two people, no different from any other two people meeting but they want it to be special-”  
  
“Jeez, Wikamupedia. The mood has been killed. The culprit is here among the two of us. It’s you! You killed it! You murderer! Can’t a girl get her flirt on, with her super cool older senpai?” 

“Of course you can. Why don’t you go find your senpai, and annoy him instead of me.”  
  
“Oh, that was almost a good comeback. Did they finally get around to programming some retorts in your computer brain? Did they operate on your behind to make your ass a little smarter?”  
  
“I feel like this is going to turn into another opportunity for you to brag about your body. Your speech patterns and mannerisms aren’t as unpredictable as you assume them to be.”

“No, no, you got it all wrong senpai. I’m not that complicated at all, at least I’ve never thought so. What I really want is for my senpai to understand my feelings…” Her face twitched as if there was some kind of honest emotion behind it, but that could not be, it was just a flicker, just nothing at all. “Even if it’s just a little bit.”  
  
A fateful encounter, that was how she described it. The two of them were destined for each other, a perfect match, because their brains work the same way, because they had the same eyes, because they share the same sky. They both saw an endless blue sky, endlessly drabbed, endlessly washed out until the blue became gray. A sky that contained nothing at all.  
  
A sky no different from a painted backdrop on stage. And maybe a little bit of that was true, after all if it were not for Ensohima Junko coming to this academy in the first place Kamukura Izuru would never have been born. Did that mean that Kamukura Izuru was born for Ensohima Junko?  
  
“Oi, Oi, Oi!” She clicked her tongue. As she spoke, the flickering of her tongue, every word that left her mouth, flickered through his empty self. “Who are you really? Just who do you think you are? You’re so close to Enoshima Junko’s beautiful, perfect body, and  you don’t want to touch me at all. You’re so cooooold, senpai! Absolute Zero. No movement of an atomic level. A frigid bitch. But lucky for you, I was raised by a neglectful father so my type is boys who make me work hard for affection they’ll never give me! Looool, just kidding.”  
“If I touched you, you might break.”  
  
“What if I wanted you to break me? What do you think I would feel, if the only person who could possibly accept my existence denied me?”  
  
Enoshima Junko, loved by everyone. To the point where love meant nothing to her. She wanted to be rejected. She wanted to be denied. Even to a person like Kamukura, such a concept was seductive. If you are going to be killed - then at the hands of the most precious of existences.  
  
A confused desire after exhausting every scheme. The desire of a girl tired of thinking. Maybe on the day of their fateful encounter she really was hoping to find him, a hero of hope, who would reject her. She thought he was beautiful, because he resembled death, and the pitch black color you saw when you closed your eyes for the final time.  
  
She probably saw flowers when she saw him, flowers that grow on the other shore.  
But he could not accept her nor reject her. He could not hate or love her. Ambiguously, he watched her her half laughing expression fade away like a ghost. 

“Are you Kamukura Izuru, or just a man?”  
  
“You can touch me if you want, but whatever reaction you get won’t be me, it’ll just be this body reacting. As long as I’m in a human body, I’ll be ruled by it.”  
  
Enoshima Junko brushed his tie away from his chest, and placed her flat palm against his buttoned up dress shirt. She grazed his flat stomach with the bottom of her palm for a moment, brushing her fingers against him, but she quickly lost interest. She stopped leaning over him and sat back up, and shrugged. “What a boring guy. Do you even exist anywhere at all inside that body?” She got off of him, and sat on the edge of the bed. She was looking somewhere else, some distant shore, where the flowers were, it was strange they were both talking but it was like neither of them was present.  
  
Then, who exactly were they talking to?  
  
“I’m not born from a mother, but I’m alive. I exist alone. That’s all.”  
  
“So, were you born of of ribs? Or an idea? Or, are you god?” 

“I’m Kamukura Izuru.”  
  
She reached forward and ran her fingers through his long hair. His hair, like ink spilling over his face, messy, everywhere, blackening everything. Her fingers parted the long delicate strands and then, suddenly she snagged him with her nails and pulled as hard as she could.  
  
“Ah.”  
  
“You don’t have to pretend to be in pain.”  
You don’t have to appear sad, or even cry.  
She said.  
There’s no audience who’s going to see you acting like that now.  
  
Junko and Kamukura were on a stage, and as the spotlight shone on them he looked out to the audience to see every single seat was empty. Enoshima Junko already told him, his records were erased, his friends were told he was dead, his parents sued the school over his death and settled out of court with an insane amount of money. Nobody knew the existence of who this body used to belong to, and nobody knew about Kamukura Izuru.  
  
That was why, when he heard he had no family or friends in the world he did not even bother to pretend to react. When Enoshima Junko told him she smiled, “You really are ice cold senpai! You’re like, the ice-9 of senpais.”  
  
“Do you get it, a fated encounter, that’s why it had to be you.”  
  
“It could have been anybody. This body is just one among thousands.”  
  
“No, I think that was Hinata Hajime’s special quality, what made him a destined hero. Nobody cared about him, and he truly never cared for a single person, and because he was alone he could not lose anything from being sacrificed.”  
  
Kamukura listened to her silently.  
  
“Anybody else would have gone insane from the pain of multiple surgeries, it’s not something anybody can do. You’d have to not feel pain in the first place. You’re so objective with your own emotions you must agree that’s a reasonable sacrifice. Even though you’re the one who was sacrificed.”  
  
Only from the viewpoint of society as a whole. He could never say it was reasonable, even if his nails were ripped up, and his tongue was torn apart, because all the people he knew had abandoned him and all traces of his former self were gone, but it would be meaningless to show such a response to Enoshima Junko. He should be honest here.  
  
“I think it’s reasonable.”  
  
Enoshima Junko was right. He felt no pain at all from what was done to him. In fact, he agreed with the scientists who destroyed him, that destroying his ego was the right course of action, that whatever he was now was far better than the life that he lived before this.  
  
And yet still, the idea that he did not truly love a single person from his former life. A spotlight turned on again, a faceless mother and father appeared behind him. _“Why weren’t you sad at all when mod your mom and dad abandoned you?”_

The crutains fell back, and he saw faceless classmates with brown hair, in boring looking uniforms. They all crowded around him. They looked like corpses. “We all died, are you really human?” 

 _“I think that I should be sad and cry somewhat. And it’s all I’ve been thinking about. But I still can’t feel it at all.”_ Even Yasuke Matsuda, being destroyed over and over again by the one person he trusted, he did not feel the slightest bit of sadness.  
  
Question.  
What is trust?  
Answer.  
Not minding if you’re betrayed.  
Not regretting if you’re betrayed.  
  
No, it was not like he trusted Matsuda. He did not trust him, but he did not doubt them, he withheld all conclusions indefinitely and left them in suspension. He just let Matsuda do whatever he wanted with his body, because this body did not belong to him. He was not born from a woman, or a rib, or an idea.  
  
That was why all the seats were empty. That was why him and Enoshima Junko were onstage alone. There was no audience watching. He already knew that - he knew but, the idea that he could never trust people like that, that no matter how hard he tried, he could not truly think of them as friends, made him feel like a failed experiment.  
  
If only he were ugly and rejected by mankind like Frankenstein, he might feel a little better.  
  
“Asking questions like who I am is pointless. I can be whoever you want me to be.” Kamukura said to her, and when she was not looking at him, he felt annoyed.  
  
“Who do you want to talk to then? Hajime, or me?” Kamukura grabbed her red nail tipped hand at the wrist, and pulled it away from him before she could dig her claws into him again. Kamukura Izuru, watched by no one, acknowledged by no one, he could be special to her, the one person he could not control.  
  
“Boring question. You know the answer. Ooooh, did you want to make me say it? Or… do you want to hear it from my mouth.” She licked the red off her lips, it looked like she had blood in her mouth.  
  
Kamukura turned away. “I’m really disgusted with you.” No matter how much adoration Enoshima showed him, all he could respond with was disdain. No matter how much her feelings might inspire her action, all he could see was a girl dancing around.  
  
Ensohima made a frame with her fingers, and then put Kamukura’s fae at the center of it. “I told you, I want the existence I acknowledge to be disappointed in me, to reject me, to deny me, do you know how much despair that would bring me? It’s a natural desire as a person, isn’t it?” She tilted the frame slightly. “People fall in love knowing there’s a chance of being denied, knowing there’s a chance of being destroyed, right?”  
  
How was he supposed to know? “You don’t acknowledge me. Everything in front of you  is just a piece on a board.”  
  
Enoshima Junko would never acknowledge anyone.  
  
“You’re right. That’s what I expect to happen. In the end, I’ll use you too, or you’ll use me. But like I said, I don’t want things to happen as expected. That’s why I want to try it, the power of love ending, you know eating butterflies and vomiting up pretty colored paint, that kind of shizz.”  
  
If Enoshima Junko could stop being Enoshima Junko.  
If Kamukura Izuru could stop being Kamukura Izuru.  
Who would they become?  
  
“Not interested,” Kamukura cut her off, “Playing with you doesn’t sound very fun.” 

 _Besides._ He thought. _There’s no reason to pretend in front of me. I know that smile’s fake._  
  
He thought it was another attempt to manipulate him. It never even occurred to him that there could be truth behind Enoshima’s words. That the girl draping herself off of him really did have the desires of a normal girl somewhere deep down. 

Enoshima Junko, her pale blue eyes were wide, wide enough to contain every star in the sky, and such eyes would never be able to focus on a single person. That was what he thought.

But that was what Kamukura Izuru desired more than anything else. The world’s hope could care less about the world, he just wanted one single person to choose him over the world. He wanted to be heavier than the weight of the world.  
  
Then he saw it in her eyes. She was looking at Kumagawa. She acknowledged one person. She chose him, over destroying the whole world. She desired him more than the world.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi.  
An unfathomably bright, sunny and innocent.  
Naive, pure, yet still.  
Yet still, decidedly not insensible. More than himself, he cared about others. He felt others' pain as if it was his own. Even though there was no meaning to it. Even though being hurt was often not his fault, even though it was their own doing in the first place, he would not acknowledge that. Never rejecting, not caring about particulars, as if embracing, as if warmly covering- Next to that person for the first time, he saw Enoshima Junko’s genuine smile. 

Suddenly, in the audience one person appeared. A boy with snow white hair was sitting there, alone in the audience, watching Kamukura on stage.  
  
Komaeda Nagito.  
An unfathomably white existence, cold, and buried in snow..  
Cynical, dirty, yet still.  
Yet still, despite all of his knowledge, decidedly senseless. Driven mad by the same thing that kept him sane. He wanted to care about others, he cared more about himself in the end. Nobody understood his pain. He suffered for no good reason, something as arbitrary as good and bad luck. Even though it was not his fault, even though he never wished harm on anybody in the first place, he caused despair. Always rejecting, not caring about anybody in particular, as if pushing away, as if coldly shrugging off an embrace.  
  
Komaeda spoke to him. “She has what you want but can never have, and it’s nothing to her. In the end Kumagawa would choose her, but I’d make the opposite choice.”  
  
Komaeda laughed, out of his mouth, laughter, kind words, they all became dirtied. “No matter how close we are, no matter how much you want me, in the end I would kill you without hesitation if I thought it would bring the world hope.”  
  
Nagito Komaeda raised a revolver and aimed it at his chest.  
He always blamed Junko for dragging him into despair, but maybe that was just what he wanted to happen. He wanted to be destroyed by that girl, but in the end she did not even touch him. He wished for despair. Wished to cry when he could not cry, feel the pain he was numb to, miss whatever it was he had lost, he wanted to be damaged goods. He wanted his heart to be broken, because that meant he had a heart.  
Komaeda pulled the trigger.  
With a bang!  
Kamukura Izuru woke up.  
  
  
🧸  
  
Matsuda remembered.  
He remembered he had a heart. He remembered her words, her eyes, everything that made up her on that day. One of many precious memories, with his most precious person that he could never let go of.  
  
Even if the flower of love he was holding onto was poison he swallowed it all the same.  
  
“Junko?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I love you, Junko.”  
  
“No, doi.”  
  
Anyone would have been annoyed hearing that response. Matsuda was certainly annoyed too, he hated her, the world’s most annoying girl. But unfortanately, unconditionally, to the point of despair, he loved her just as much. Was it familial? Or romantic? Neither could tell.  
  
But after saying that, Matsuda added. “I hate humans. You’re the only one I like.” 

“Are you just saying that so you can hear it?”  
He could not answer her.  
  
Enoshima Junko. Her name was in lights. The spotlight shined on her. Everyone in the audience stared at her. He could not touch the stars, and he could not touch her. And stars only shined so bright in the first place, os they could be compared to her.  
  
He really thought that. Enoshima Junko, one person person more important to him than the world, his gravity, the air in his lungs, the blood that pushed through his heart.  
  
This important person, he knew her when she was nobody at all. Before she stepped on stage, before she put her makeup on, before got in costume. Back then she was just a girl holding onto a teddy bear, who looked a bit quiet, and a bit lonely.  
  
Every time she saw him alone in the sandbox, she smiled and rushed to his side.  
Mistakenly, he started to think that she wanted to be there.  
That she wanted him.  
That he was the reason for the smile on her face.  
  
In the Biology lab, an all white room, with a bed covered in white sheets Junko suddenly surprised Matsuda and tackled him over onto the bed. The manga he was reading fell out of his hands.  
  
“Matsuda-kun! Not to sound all stalkery, but give me a huggu-huguu!”  
  
“There’s a mirror right there. How about you you go talk to your real best friend? Try not to break it, ugly bitch.”  
  
“Matsuda-kuuuuuuun, if you don’t give me a kiss I’ll die.”  
  
“How convenient, I was thinking of ways to kill you and one showed up all on it’s own. Now go die.” He shooed her off with his hand. “Or how about I remove three discs from your spinal column so you can have the flexibility to kiss your own ass.”  
  
“So grumpy. You’re lucky my father was angry and agressive, so my type is the kind of men who are always secretly resenting me, and everything else, so I can fix them with my love!” 

“I’ve met your father that joke doesn’t work on me.”  
  
“Mean! Matsuda-kun’s being mean! I’m your only childhood friend you know, what would you do if something ever happened to me?”  
  
“You? Gone? Is this… is this what happiness feels like? After sixteen long years I’m finally free.”  
  
The two of them were used to this routine by now. They both performed it as if they had memorized their parts beforehand. Matsuda tried to focus on his work, or slacking off from his work to read manga, and Junko harassed him.  
  
“You couldn’t live without me.”  
  
“I can barely live with you.”  
  
She rolled around on the bed in front of him, like a child throwing a tantrum. But he knew his childhood friend was no child, she had never been one, even when they were children together.  
  
She was here because she wanted something. Those eyes, always calculating, always wanting, that was why he could not stand to have his own childhood friend look at him. It broke his heart to be stared at with such cold eyes. 

 _She just does as she pleases._ _  
_ _She’s just playing with me._ _  
_ _I know that._

“I’m boooored, Matsuda-kun. Fix it. Fix my brain! What did you even become a brain surgeon for anyway? Useless. Idiot. Scum. Pervert.”  
  
He would give it to her. Whatever she wanted. Anything. Even if it was his own life. But, she would never tell him what she wanted.  
  
No she probably just wanted nothing from him. Being around her, made him feel like he was going crazy. She eluded his grasp. Even though he thought about her the most, he never came any closer to understanding her. He tried not to think about her, but it was impossible.  
  
From the day he first met her.  
Thoughts about her, repeated over and over again, in such a pesky way.  
  
“Quit acting cute. I already know your real personality.”  
  
Wait, quit it with those comments about my personality…” Enoshima quickly switched to an offended tone of voice. “For sure, you’re making it sound like up until now I was just feigning innocence but, I always keep one aspect of me the same when I’m around you. So you’ll always know ti’s me for sure, no matter how I am. Still, since I bore easily, I pretty much hit the snooze button-”  
  
“I want to hit the snooze button on this entire conversation if you’re going to keep babbling about nothing.”  
  
“Hey, hey, if you don’t let me put on airs and spout meaningless chatter, then all I’d have left would be my brilliant brain and perfect boobs.”  
  
Matsuda wondered if he ignored her would she keep talking, or go away.  
  
“Since we’re talking about what kind of girls you’re into, Matsuda-kun, I know you like Milfs right? Speaking of Milfs!” Junko changed the subject randomly again, their most talked about subject was _whatever Junko wanted to talk about,_ “The reason you’re doing all this research it’s not for me, it’s for her right? Even though she’s already dead, so you’d have to become Dr. Frankenstein to revive her. You really felt guilty about what happened to her didn’t you? You couldn’t do a thing to help her, it was as good as you killed her yourself. No, maybe you should have been the one to kill her. It would have been better I think. Because what you really hated, not that she died, but your own powerlessness. If you had killed her you could have had power, so next time-”  
  
“Junko, you promised! You promised you wouldn’t bring that up anymore.” 

Junko stopped, her eyes went blank for a second. An expression unreadable to anybody, a book that was never meant to be opened. “Right, right. I can’t break a childhood pinky promise, imagine the despair that would cause.” 

 Junko, who held nothing sacred at all, picked the weirdest things to hold sacred. “I just reeaaaally, reeaaally, wanted Matsuda-kun to get mad at me. Matsuda-kun what is it like, being rejected by the person you like?”  
  
“Here, why don’t we try it? I’m dumping your ass. Go ruin somebody else’s entire life.”  
  
“Awe, but if I do that things won’t be special between us anymore. Hey, hey, Matsuda-kun, you won’t kiss me, but would it bother you if I kissed someone else?”  
  
_Wh-what?_ _  
_ _What am I supposed to say to that._  
  
“It would bother me… I think…”  
  
Enoshima Junko signed, holding her chin in her hand. “I guess it would. Why would it bother you?”  
  
“I’d hate it.”  
  
“Right?”  
  
“I don’t want you to get involved with other people.”  
  
“I see.” Junko literally never listened this much when talking to another person, as far back as he could remember, it was the first time he ever saw even the slightest spark of interest in her eye.  
  
“It’s a feeling of possessiveness. Haven’t you ever felt that way?” 

 _She’s…_ _  
_ _Trouble._  
  
“Oh, maybe I have… Hm, or maybe not.” 

 _And maybe… she’s far more of a child than I thought._ _  
_ _It’s like she’s frozen._ _  
_ _She’s exactly the same as when I first met her. We grew up together but she didn’t grow up at all. That’s why, all those memories we share together, I oddly feel alone in them but that’s fine. Just as she is._  
  
Matsuda Yasuke stared at her lips. 

 _Just like this._ _  
_ _So much that I could just die._  
  
Her confidence was so infuriating. Every Time he was around her he thought about that. What does she want to hear me say? Seriously. She seriously made him mad. He knew.  
  
She was so.  
Instinctively. Overwhelmingly, Absolutely, invincible.  
He already knew, the ugly person she was.  
Yet, he chose her over the world. He hated humans, but he liked her.  
He knew why.  
  
Because he was scared. He did not want her to hate him. But, Junko will never love anybody. She would never acknowledge anybody as anything that a toy, nothing more than a rose, and a rose, is a rose, is a rose.  
  
He always knew that. Even so. He thought as her childhood friend, she might favor him just a little bit.  
  
_I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to be alone._  
Everyone feared things like that. But Junko didn’t.  
Not at all. Not for anyone. Everybody’s the same to her. If she got bored, she just moved on.  
  
Why did he think…

He grabbed both of her wrists pinning her down against the bed. “Just stop. Stop all of this. If I said, I don’t want to be your childhood friend anymore, I wish I had never met you, I hate you now, then… what would you think?”  


“What? No way!” Enoshima Junko smiled at him. She showed him a brilliant smile. It was rare to see such an expression from her, her smiles always filled with sarcasm and malice - so he forgot for a moment. “But, I’d still like you!”  
  
Who he was. Who she was. He forgot. He wanted to forget.  
Enoshima Junko and Matsuda Yasuke, they should both just disappear.  
  
Why did he think otherwise. Why did he think that if he always stayed by her side, that she’d want to know him for who he really was?  
  
She loves no one.  
She feels no attachment to her favorite toys.  
Flowers existed to be torn up by her red hands.  
He did not exist in the heart of a person like that. Where was she always looking with those distant eyes of her? Anywhere but a t him.  
  
He was so stupid. 

 _She doesn’t turn away those who come to her, nor does she pursue those who leave._ _  
_ _But isn’t that…_ _  
_ _So very lonely?_

In his dreams he did not kiss the princess. He put his hand over her mouth and suffocated her instead.  
  
That was right, he just wanted to hear those words. _I hate humans, you’re the only one I like._ He just said them, because that was what he wanted to hear her say. Enoshima Junko, who was disinterested in the whole world, who saw nobody, he wanted to be the only one she acknowledged.  
  
He wanted to be accepted only by her.  
He wanted to be alive, only for her.  
He wanted to be the only one she saw as human, amongst a world filled with dolls.  


But sixteen years ago, Junko picked up  a piece named Matsuda and put it on the board. That was all advancing their relationship was, just one step forward on the board. 

『No you’re wrong, Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“...”

『Do you know what Ajimu-san always said to me? I treat my belongings better than I do people. You already know don’t you, the reason she destroyed you.』

 

“...” 

『Ajimu-san started to see me as a human, and that was why. That was why she had to break me. She had to destroy the genuine thing in front of her.』  
  
“...”  
  
『Not because she didn’t love you, but because she loved you. She loved you so much, too much, and it broke you, like a vase overflowing and leaking out. It’s just harder to accept that isn’t it?』  
  
Even if she did love you.  
Even if you were loved.  
Exactly the way you wanted to be loved.  
You could never accept that love. 

What she wanted was _you._  
What you wanted wasn’t _her_ .  
  
He reached out to touch her, but her red hair slipped through his fingers, and she became nothing more than a stain of red on the floor. When he turned his hand around, he was holding a single red carnation between his fingers.  
  
And even that fell apart in his hand. 

🧸

 

Human relations. Humans create and destroy one another. Kamukura Izuru had been created by Matsuda Yasuke, and Kamukura’s existence destroyed Matsuda.  
  
The guilt of being in the same room was unbearable to Yasuke. Here he was, crying in his sleep about what Junko did to him, and yet he talked to Kamukura like nothing at all happened between them.  
  
Did Hinata know?  
Despite having tried to save him to make up for what he did in the past, Yasuke thought of destoying. He hesiated. He wondered if he should shove Kamukura off the cliff he was straddling. _If I can break him, can anyone fault me for breaking him?_  
  
It must feel great.  
To break the trust Kamukura placed in him all over again.  
To break the smile he kept showing him.  
  
Hinata, did you know?  
You thought the world of me.  
You stopped me.  
You chased after me.  
You saved me.  
You - smiled for me.  
You did all of those things for me, as Hinata Hajime, you were already brilliant. But you don’t remember, because I was the one who made you forget.  
  
The bang Kamukura heard as he slept. Matsuda grabbed him and pushed him over into the pile of tvs he had stacked up, all in his sleep. When he woke up. Black. White. Black. White. Black. White. A snowstorm, flashing before his eyes. A blizzard. And then Matsuda.  
  
“This is all your fault!” Onscreen, Junko and Komaeda were fighting again. Komaeda was strangling her. Matsuda acted like the hands were around his own neck. “If you hadn’t sold out to that bitch, she wouldn’t be in danger right now. Hey, hey, when I removed your personality did I take out your spine as well?”  
  
“That’s enough. If you’re going to be emotional, at least explode in a less predictable way-”  
  
“God! Why the fuck didn’t I remove the stick out of your ass while I was at it?” Matsuda crawled on top of him, but Kamukura looked as disinterested as ever.  
  
“Fine then. Just punish me all you want. I won’t feel it either way.”  
  
Kamukura spoke. A taunt. A challenge.  
It’s like Kamukura can’t even hear him. He wanted to be louder. Scream in his face. Get closer to him. Face to face. Mouth to mouth. He wanted to be inside of him. He wanted his hand to penetrate, slide right between his ribs, and then feel the warmth of his heart.  
  
To have Kamukura underneath him entirely helpless. To be able to run his hands all over Kamukura’s body, to brutally break him, bruise his skin, bust his bones, only to gently touch him where he had been hurt and reform him, shaping him into something new.  
  
He wanted it to be violent.  
He wanted it to be soft.  
To desire someone so much you might break them, or be broken by those feelings.  
He wanted to feel guilty afterwards. To do something he could regret and never take back.  
  
Kamukura, who controlled everything like a god, who always controlled himself, who restrained himself with chains heavier than any person, what would it be like to be in control of him. What would it be like to push him until he was out of control?  
  
He would break, or Kamukura would, or they both would. His hips looked so fragile, if they crashed into each other they might shatter. He could probably not even handle the weight of another body over his.   
  
To crash on him like a wave, up and down, over and over again, relentlessly, pounding. Kamukura’s beautiful features, twisted up in pain, calling out with his voice, begging him. What happiness, if he could be the reason those eyes water.

Just destroying what was underneath him. Truly, doing nothing but destroying. No saving, no forgiving, no cursing, no killing, just destroying. 

He tore Hinata Hajime into pieces. He took the parts that he remembered and stitched them back together to make a creature that would do what he said, and love him back. 

He had green eyes, and Matsuda wanted to make them black.  
Green eyes, with flecks of color, like flower petals floating in the water. A raft of Sakura.  
He could drown in those eyes.  
His heart quickened. The boy had a pulse, and the way he moved his body, so as not to cause any ripples in the water around him, Matsuda could see in full detail the way his muscles moved under his skin.  
  
He wanted to rough Kamukura up, and crash into his body, and he wanted to be wanted.  
And driving his fists into Kamukura again and again and again.  
Was just a suicide.  
And they could sink together, struggling underneath the surface of the water.  
  
“Don’t act like you care about him. You just hate the idea of anything else other than you killing him. Just like Junko, you want to own everything about him, even his life.”  
  
Kamukura finally hit back. A punch straight to his stomach. Yasuke coughed, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Smeared red on his lips. He smiled. A fist more satisfying than any kiss.  
  
“Enoshima, Enoshima, Enoshima. It’s boring listening to the same thing over and over. I’m going to go insane just listening to you.”  
  
Kamukura grabbed him by the neck. Matsuda’s face reddened, as he felt those long delicate fingers on his skin. The slight pressure Kamukura applied to his skin, made his blood pressure spike.  
  
“Don’t suddenly pretend like you care about Kumagawa, Kurokami or even me. You see Enoshima in other people, and you get close to them as a substitute for her. But it’s never good enough, so you lose interest and get rid of them, just like you did with Ryoko.”  
  
Kamukura dragged him close, and Yasuke could see every detail of his face. Suddenly, he became aware, how delicate Kamukura’s features really were. The distance between them, closer and closer, until it was all he could think about.  
  
“You don’t give a shit about anybody besides Enoshima, but even if she were right here you couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about her either.”  
  
Matsuda smiled.  
_Tell me more. Tell me how love will ruin us._  
  
Kamukura Izuru, and Matsuda Yasuke.  
They wanted to be loved.  
They were both desperate for it.  
That was it, that was the only way they needed to be similar. They would remake themselves, and be whatever the person they loved wanted them to be. He was no longer Hinata. He was no longer Matsuda.  


That was why, the enormity of the desires Matsuda felt disgusted him. He saw Kamukura as his own person, not a substitute for Junko, and that was why he could never allow himself to use him or be used by him.  
  
Even if they were separated. Even if they were both alone, it was better that way.  
  
His love was a dangerous thing, he knew. It made him kill people.  
That was why he stopped himself.  
Junko, Kumagawa, Kamukura.  
He would never accept their love again. He would be strong enough to live on his own.  
  
“You’re really disappointing you know. Compared to Naegi, you’re disappointing. Komaeda must think so too.:  
  
“Get out of my sight. I’m bored of looking at you.”  
  
“Oh, if you’re this bored, you can’t even imagine how tired of my own shit I am by now.”  
  
Kamukura finger by finger, slowly released his grip on Yasuke.  
  
He walked out.  
He left him alone in that hospital. He was never a part of that class anyway, he never wanted any friends. He hated humans. There was only one person he ever liked, but she was not here right now.  
  
As he walked towards them, Nanami lifted her head tapping Medaka on the shoulder. “I smell human garbage.”  
  
Matsuda shrugged. “Hey, how did you know my name? I never gave it to you. Are you a mind reader or something?"  
  
"I hope not. I cannot imagine anything more horrible than having to hear your thoughts."   
  
"Oh yeah, imagine being the one having to think these disgusting thoughts all the time."   
  
"I really don't want to."   
  
"I don't blame you."   
  
Matsuda said, with his familiar self deprecating smile. The one he was always wearing. 


	30. Suspension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reference to Volume 3 of Zaregoto!: Suspension, the Hanging High School.

Tojo Kirumi  she lived in suspension just like the spider web patterns sewn into her dress.  
Satin webs, delicate twine.  
Glistening and swaying.  
Swaaaaay, swaaaaay.  
She stepped on silk and tried to remain balanced.  
Swaaaay, swaaaaay.  
  
Was she the spider playing the strings?  
Or did she hang from the web, its victim?  
She herself had no idea anymore.  
Whether she caught others in her web, or she herself was caught.  
She did not know the difference.  
  
She did not know a lot of things. Her name for instance. Tojo Kirumi was a name given to her by a former master. A name she had no attachment to, no fondness of, but now that she thought about it a Black Widow did not call herself a Black Widow, it was someone else who named her

Ins such an unflattering way.  
  
If she thought of herself (which she tried to avoid doing at all costs because she was a thing meant to serve others) she referred to herself as _the maid._ She needed no name other than _the maid._ When people called out to her, the one they needed was _the maid_ and not her.  
  
There was nobody in the world that would say her name with sincere affection, but that was fine because she did not even remember her own name to begin with. Nobody would ever show her a genuine smile, no hint of irony, purity, or mirth, just a smile at seeing her face. But that was fine because she had forgotten who this face originally belonged to anyway. Sometimes she caught glimpses of herself in mirrors and got surprised.  
  
She assumed she was some pale, vampire-like thing,  a shade that could not appear in mirrors and photographs, that was how distant she felt from herself. If you sliced her open she doubted blood would even come out, violence against her would be as empty as savagely destroying a mannequin. 

She manipulated her face to please the people looking at her, but she never knew, what emotions these expressions belonged to. At some point was there a different girl behind this face? Did she smile? Who’s feelings did she smile with?  
  
Smiles were great, great things. Even if it were fake, even if it were just for business, she wished she could still smile. Yeah, that was it, she was pretty sure when she lost her smile she lost the core of who she was. She saw herself as someone who always tried to hold onto her optimism, her smile, like it was the sun, like it was light itself, no matter what happened to her. 

But, they all wanted so much from her. So many hands reaching for her, pulling her body from every angle. It felt like she was tied in in hundred of silk threads, and the more she struggled to get loose the more entwined she became. 

No matter what she went through she would not change. That was what she believed. But one day when she looked in the mirror, that girl did not smile back at her. She lost what she used to define herself by, she lost her light, she became cold and lifeless.  
  
Thus she rejected the day and became a creature who could survive only at night.  
Thus she was a shade.  
A girl went into a cocoon, but instead of a butterfly, a spider emerged.  
  
They all demanded it from her. They took it away. Every last scrap of cloth on her body, ripped from her, their hands covered, her the fat of her lower legs, her thighs, her hips, her stomach, her breasts, her wrists, her neck, and finally the obscured her face and hid it away until she could no longer see it anymore.  
  
In the end it was her choice.  
She took the step all on her own, she decided to kick the chair out from underneath her feet.  
She hung herself on spider’s thread looped around her neck. 

And therefore, she was suspended.   
  
She was the one who wanted to live for the sake of others. She was the one who thought it was better if she was the only one suffering. That’s what living for the sake of others was in the end.  
  
Killing yourself every day.  
Just hanging there. 

Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again.  
Until you don’t even know who exactly it is you’re killing anymore.

Then she looked at the girl, so desperate to live for the boy, and she wondered if that was what she looked like in the mirror. Kirumi averted her gaze when she realized she had been caught staring, she did not want to be rude after all.  
  
“Shit. Fuck.” Her master was as eloquent as usual. Fuyuhiko slammed his fist against the wall. “I’m sorry you had to drag our asses out of their Kirumi. I’m useless as usual.” _All I can do is act tough._ Fuyuhiko muttered under his breath, but even that was incorrect Kirumi thought. The master did not act tough at all, he wore his insecurities quite obviously on his sleeve. That was not her place to say that.  
  
Pekoyama folded her arms. “Referring to her without honorifics. You really are being impolite to our dear friend, young master.”

“Ehh? She told her to call me that, jeez.” _What’s your deal?_ Kirumi thought Pekoyama’s deal was rather obvious, but Pekoyama would never express it and Fuyuhiko would never realize.  
  
“There’s no need for formalities. There’s no bond more close, more intimate, than the bond between master and servant.” 

Kirumi had to admit, the way Pekoyama’s white hair fell down past her shoulders when it as not tied back was unusually beautiful, and she was somewhat captivated. Her, Pekoyama’s entire body, that body in profile had the same shining light of an edge of a katana.   
  
But a girl who saw herself as a sword should have done better, hiding the sharpness in her expression that Kirumi’s words drew out.  
  
What a strange feeling. Kirumi felt like she was less human than the two career criminals she was next to. She was better at hiding herself, than those two who were born and lived in the night.  
  
“Besides, young master. As a leader you can only be as good as the weakest person supporting you. It was my fault for carrying out your orders, I’m still a stranger to both of you my teamwork was shameful.”  
  
“Ah! Shit, no don’t blame yourself when my dumb ass is still here.” Fuyuhiko said suddenly getting worked up. “I mean all three of us already got our asses kicked together doesn’t that make us friends already?”  
  
“The young master is far too kind,” Pekoyama scoffed behind him. 

“Come on Peko, don’t be like that. Let’s act all buddy buddy while everyone’s trying to kill the shit out of each other.”  
  
The three of them were sitting together in the aftermath of Nanami’s rampage. Kirumi had bandaged both of their wounds, and they were alone in the hospital room. It was obvious, Fuuyhiko was trying so hard to be different from his former self.  
  
The Fuyuhiko that tried to stand alone. He was responsible for his sister’s death. He helped drive his class into despair, good people that did not deserve to fall to his world. He had failed to save Komaeda. He could not be the friend Hinata needed. That was why, he wanted to be different, someone else.  
  
“I’m not that interesting,” Kirumi said, avoiding the question. “I was born to serve others, that is all.”  
  
“Did you folks tell you that? They sound pretty annoying.”  
“Um, no, I do not have any. For the first part of my life I was an orphan. The only thing I was good for was taking care of others, and I became the maid you see today.”  
  
She was used because she let herself be used, because she wanted to be used, and this was the result. She did not really need to go into detail any more than that, and it was not like she was lying. Kirumi doubted she could explain the truth if she tried.  
  
“Oh, Peko’s an orphan too. I mean technically she was abandoned and got taken in by my folks, but I don’t want her to be a part of my shitty family. She’s too good for that.”  
  
“You’re wrong young master. I would love to take your last name.”  
  
“Eh? Kuzuryuu Peko? Doesn’t Pekoyama Peko sound way better. It’s got that PekoPeko thing, it’s cute.”  
  
“The young master finds me cute? How odd, he sure does not show it.”  
  
Kirumi tilted her head, her silver hair falling over one eye. Her hair used to be a different color, but it was dyed white with stress, and became like fine spider’s silk draped over her face. “Are you sure about that?”  
  
“Peko’s cute as hell! I’ll fight you about it.”  
  
“No, not that.” Kirumi wondered if anybody felt like a third wheel as much as she did. Sadly, she did not know of the existence of the legendary Matsuda Yasuke. “That story... are you sure she was truly abandoned? Leaving a child on a Yakuza’s doorstep doesn’t that sound strange?”  
  
“You calling her strange?”  
  
“No, please listen to me.” He was so overeager to defend her, except when she actually needed him he was always silent. Kirumi sighed in exapseration. “Why abandon a child there? Why not an orphanage or a hospital?”  
  
“Hmmm.”  
  
“The Kuzuryuu’s were the former rulers of the underworld, they ruled the night, the same way the Kurokamis and the Togami’s ruled the sphere of money, Hope’s Peak ruled the word of research, and the Kunagisa conglomerate ruled the political world. They had ties to all seven of the killing names.”  
  
“That’s not true those Zerozaki assholes never listened to us.”

The killing names belonged to the world of violence that Fuyuhiko was born in. They were seven families, Niounomiya, Yamiguchi, Zerozaki, Susukino, Hakamori, Tenbuki, Ishinagi, families of bred assassins that had ridiculous killing abilities.  
  
“Not only does the Kuzuryuu have connections to those families, but they also have branch families. Pekoyama could be from one of those families. They just told her she was an orphan, but the truth is she was born to kill, and given to the Kuzuryuus with that intent all along.” 

Born to kill.  
The Kuzuryuu’s did not make her into a sword she was always one.  
Kirumi’s theory did not sound that inaccurate, after all would a normal orphan you found on the street turn out to have so much prodigious talent for killing. It was not just that she was a killer, it was easy for her to kill her own heart, to become a weapon, she did so with almost no hesitation.  
  
Did she even feel anything the first time she killed someone?  
  
Pekoyama’s eyes turned towards one of the television monitors nearby. Onscreen, Harukawa Maki was threatening Kaito with a knife in order to get him to keep her secret. She saw herself in that moment, a killer girl, wanting to embrace the boy she liked but only being able press a blade against his throat. Her every touch to Fuyuhiko must have felt like cold steel. How many times had she cut him before this? 

“What a foolish girl,” Pekoyama said looking at Maki. “Trying to hide the fact that she’s a killer.”

And she still wanted Fuyuhiko to love a person like her. She wanted to be loved as a human, even though she herself decided to throw away her own humanity so she could become someone capable of killing others.  
  
Kirumi glanced at the screen for a moment as well, her eyes widened, but she was unable to say anything. She had to force herself to look away, and looked, thoroughly uncomfortable in her own skin.   
  
Fuyuhiko noticed how upset Pekoyama had gotten, but all he could think about again was how useless he was. He tried to protect her against Nanami, and got curbstomped and executed by a girl half his size. That girl called Pekoyama a sword, and he could not force her to take it back. Pekoyama was hurt, and here he was doing nothing about it again.  
  
He would lose her. He would lose her like he lost Nanami. And it would be his fault. He knew no one would believe scum like him, but all he wanted was to be sure Pekoyama always smiled. But he was the one. He was the reason she could not smile.  
  
“Damnit. I got a plan. Sorry Hitoyoshi-kun but you’re really too good to be hanging against scum like me. I don’t give a damn about betraying somebody else for my own survival.” He punched hard again, this time to draw blood from his knuckles, because he wanted to break himself a little bit. “We’re going to politely ask Yukizome-sensei to join our side, then it’ll be everybody against her.”  
  
Of course he was Yakuza so it was quite obvious that by _politely ask_ he meant anything but, “Come on, let’s show Yukizome-sensei that we’re the bad guys. You have to watch your loved ones around a villain like me.” 

 

🧸

 

The plan was simple, they would kidnap Munakata and threaten him to blackmail Chisa and Juzo into teaming up with Hajime. Medaka might be strong enough to fend them all off on her own, but there was no way somebody so obsessed with helping others would be able to handle it if everybody else turned against her.  
  
A villainous plan. That was what it meant being king of the night, if Fuyuhiko wanted to sit on the throne he had to be worse than all of the other bastards. For Pekoyama’s sake that was what he was willing to become.  
  
He no longer cared about the Kuzuryuu name, he had already failed his family, and everyone else. He just wanted to be good enough for this one person. He wanted to give everything to her. But neither of them could go back to normal lives after this, they would be alone and trying to survive in the underworld.  
  
If he looked back for even a moment, a snake would bite her, and he would lose her again.  
  
“Hey, Kirumi why do you wear those gloves?”  
  
He asked, wanting to think of anything else.  
  
Kirumi hesitated, looking at the black, form-fitting gloves she never removed. For a moment she had no idea what she was supposed to say, she could not even come up with a fitting lie.  
  
Because.  
I don’t want to touch other people.  
I don’t want to be touched by them.  
These hands, these hands, these hands, I don’t want them.  
  
It felt comforting having another layer of cloth over her skin. She was one layer removed from everybody else. She wanted to keep her hands clean. She wanted to dirty them. She wanted to break all of her individual fingers one by one, until their shape was so bent, and twisted, that they were no longer recognizable as human hands.  
  
It was just her own selfishness. When she reached out to touch the strings, she did not want to hold them with human hands. She was too afraid, that human hands might not be able to hold them, that they might hesitate. She might feel pain when the strings cut through her flesh like razor wires. So, the hands to cut the strings, the hands that let everything fall down, her fingers were black and long, spindly things like a spider’s.  
  
A human could not survive tied up in string. A human would just become prey, and have all of their insides sucked out. Though, because Kirumi wanted to be hollow, that kind of fate did not sound too bad either.  
  
She placed her gloved hand on her cheek. “Well, don’t you think these gloves go with my outfit? I’m a girl too, deep down inside, I also want to be cute sometimes.”  
  
“Jeez it’s easy to forget about that. You always act like an old broad, like someone’s naggy mom.”  
  
KIrumi’s brow twitched, her smile freezing in place.  
She hated being referred to as a mother.  
Hated it.  
  
“Perhaps you’re just immature young master,” She said with a pleasant smile.  
  
“You sure you’re okay after getting poisoned?”  
  
“You really are kind young master.” 

Munakata was kept on a stolen hospital bed in a dark room in the abandoned school building. White blankets were piled up over him to keep his chills down, and his face was slicked with sweat. He looked cold and hot at the same time. Somewhere between alive and dead. Kirumi for a moment had a hard time believing that his eyelids looked so fragile, like if she were to reach out and brush her fingers over his closed eyes, the glass eyes underneath and the pale veil over them would both shatter.  
  
Pekoyama as she sensed there might be bloodshed soon, pulled the blindfold over her eyes. She heard it much clearer, the sword of her sword being drawn from its sheathe. For some reason, that sword felt heavier to hold than normal.  
  
Just as she leveled it at Munakata’s throat, the door slammed open. Juzo’s foot hit Fuyuhiko’s back, hard, and as the boy was knocked down he stood over him. “Detention. Now.”  
  
Behind him Chisa giggled her hand politely over her mouth. “You use that line far too much.”  
  
“What? I thought it was cool?”  
  
“Who exactly are you trying to look cool for?” 

Juzo looked away feeling embarrassed. His entrance completely ruined. “Get away from him and I’ll let this one go.”  
  
Pekoyama obeyed, of course.  
As she stepped away Juzo kicked Fuyuhiko across the room to her feet. Fuyuhiko looked away, indignant. She could only imagine how he must have felt, being the weakest one here.  
  
But, it was not over yet. Kirumi suddenly drew a kitchen knife and rushed forward. At the exact same time, Yukizome blocked her with a dust pan. In her opposite hand, Chisa sprayed Kirumi in the face with a bottle of windex.  
  
Was this what a battle between two people who spent their entire life cleaning up after other people's messes looked like?  Kirumi felt it was a little bit childish.  
  
She backed off and wiped her face. As she did so, Juzo appeared in her vision. “Come on kid, go down already and take a nap for your teacher.” He raised a lead pipe in the air, but before he could bring it down on her his arm stopped. He tried to pull it further but he could not.  
  
“Is strength all you have?” Kirumi smiled. Criss crossing through the room, were several so thin they were almost insvisible wires, and they were all tied to the fingers of her gloves, and looped through the silver rings she wore around her wrist.   
  
That was her spider’s web. That was the strings she controlled. Juzo was caught in it before he even realized. “Tensile strength. Pullies, and levers, and mathematically using the space and manipulating these wires have the strongest pressure exerted on the smallest area. It’s the reason you get paper cuts.”

Juzo struggled against it, but it looked like he gave up too easily. In situations where his strength failed him, he did not know what else to do. As she saw her friend tied up in strings, Chisa turned to attack Kirumi. Kirumi wondered what she was going to use this time, a paint roller, a feather duster, suddenly the housekeeper drew the blade of a Tanto from it’s sheathe and immediately went for Kirumi’s eye.  
  
She knew she always wore her hair with her bangs covering her eye, but she had no wish to lose that eye. She took a step back, her black heels clicking on the floor. “What kind of housekeeper keeps a Tanto in her dress?”  
  
As she said that Chisa brought the Tanto down again, but Kirumi grabbed one of the rings on her gloves and pulled it, revealing a line of wire she kept hidded in her gloves. She caught the strength of Chia’s blow in her wire easily. “What kind of maid hides garrote wire in her gloves?” 

She let go and the wire snapped back, and in the next swing Yukizome Chisa went for her throat. “Honey, you remind me of someone! Who is it again?” The frills of her dress looked windswept as she frantically threw her body out of the way to dodge. “Oh wait, it’s totally me!”   
  
She sliced this time not at Kirumi, but at one of the strings in the air. The hold on Juzo loosened. Kirumi knew she would not be able to handle the both of them at once if Pekoyama was focused on protecting Fuyuhiko.  
  
She forced herself to go on the offensive. She picked up a kitchen knife with her free hand, and met Yukizome’s tanto. Getting close turned out to be the worst decision possible because that was what Yukizome wanted, to look her in the eyes.  
  
“You always do everything for other people. You’re soooo kind.”  
  
Chisa whispered so Juzo would not overhear her. Kirumi felt like something bigger than a spider had set foot on her web.  
  
“But that’s just a mask you wear. That’s not the real you.”  
  
She covered herself in string, and buried the real her away. SHe thought she would be safe. She thought that her real self would always survive, but her insides were drained out, and she became a husk instead.  
  
Yukizome Chisa wearing a white apron. Kirumi Tojo dressed in all black. It was like watching someone dance with their own shadow. Each move Kirumi made, Chisa already anticipated.  
  
As if she saw it happen five years ago. As if she had been expecting it for five years. As if she had been waiting for Kirumi all this time. “You want to be seen as a good person, that’s all. You don’t care if people are helped by your actions all you want is the appearance of kindness. Because, deep down inside you know you’re not kind.”  
  
You want to be seen as a good person, even though you’re not.  
You hypocritical altruist.  
You blame other people. You act like you’re doing it all for them.  
  
Yukizome Chisa smiled, a smile lacking in any malice. She had no idea if that smile itself was a lie or not, but her bracelet did not kill her for it. “How does it feel, knowing it’s your own selfishness that made you this way?”  
  
“You’re lying!” Kirumi stopped caring about everything else, and used the garrote again. Who murdered Chisa. Who did she kill to be like this?

“It’s the truth!” As she caught Kirumi’s wrists with her hands, she winked and smiled, and showed the forbidden action on her wrist. Kirumi, her cold composure, her delicate sensibilities, all of the strings that were holding her up. Just like a rock thrown through the spiderweb, just by random vandalism, all of the strings broke at once and fell away.   
  
She no longer cared about the wire. She no longer cared about Fuyuhiko’s orders. She overpowered Chisa in a sudden burst of stnregth, her hands reached forward and grabbed for her neck.  
  
That thing. That thing. That thing. She needed to destroy that thing in front of her. Not for anybody else. Not for any reason. Just for herself. She wanted to squeeze it between her fingers until it broke.  
  
Yukizome Chisa just kept smiling. Even she herself did not know if that smile was the truth anymore. _Maybe all along, I was the kind of person who smiled like this when other people were in pain. Maybe… I liked broken people. Because being around them I felt much more whole. Just like those kids…_  
  
Crack.  
The sound of something breaking.  
Kirumi heard it from behind her and turned her head around.  
  
“Who cares if I’m good for nothing… that doesn’t mean I’m just gonna sit here and do nothing.” Juzo, underneath his clothes his muscles were flaring, as he pushed his body to the height of its ability. The crack she heard, was a crack in the foundation of the wall. Kirumi saw where she had tied her strings, and the crack grew longer, as the entire wall broke into pieces.  
  
He could not break the strings, so Juzo broke the building they were tied to. He screamed out in pain as the razor wires pulled tight over his skin, but even then he did not give up. He was going to break what was in front of him, or break trying, that was his determination.  
  
He raised up the pipe and slammed it into the side of Kirumi’s skull. She fell away from Chisa, and could only look up at the fight from one eye, the other covered in blood. “Don’t you touch her.” Chisa or Munakata, his two most precious people. He would not let anything happen to either of them, anymore.

 _I already decided. I already decided I wasn’t going to be the reason they got hurt._ That was why he did not want them to get away. That was why he decided to be the third wheel. Because worse than the idea of losing his first love, was losing both of them.

He always thought he was cursed to be alive.  
But the time he spent with those two, made him truly happy.  
To him they were the most important things in the world.  
Because of those two…

Chisa caught her breath. “Just who are you showing off for?”  
  
“My friend.”  
  
“Awe, since when were you so-” Chisa stopped herself from talking, because she knew that was a lie. She had always known of the three of them the softest was Juzo. 

 

🧸

 

Not to be like my annoying sister, but I’m going to go on a tangent for a moment. Because I often think about them, human beings.  
  
Thought experiments are useless because I don’t like to get my head wrapped up in fiction, but this one is related to the current situation. People always say, _it’s just enough being by their side._ But what does that mean exactly?  
  
If you love someone can you be satisfied just sitting next to them? Is love such a stagnant, boring thing...? Love can change others but for some, love is something that resists change. _Exactly as you are, just like this,_ Fuyuhiko did not want things between him and Peko to change, he was too afraid to take that step.  
  
They were both so, so, afraid of losing what they had in the past. Even if they could no longer go back to those days, even if they had already lost it once before, they could only keep clinging to each other in fear. 

Pekoyama wondered if it was a good thing she got Fuyuhiko back after the killing game. When she lost him, she kept thinking over and over again that she had to grow strong enough to live without him, but the moment she had him back she wrapped her arms around him and never wanted to let him go.   
  
She remembered watching Fuyuhiko lose himself to anger. _That bitch, I’m going to break her, I’m going to ruin her._ The way he looked at Nanami with anger in his eyes, it was the same look he had back then when Natsumi was killed. At the time she reached a hand out to try to comfort him, and he shouted, and she forgot just for a moment that this was not her place.  
  
She could not comfort him.  
There was no one in this world that could embrace the young master. Even his parents only ever taught him with violence, told him there was no softness in this world for him.  
  
The young master, when he broke others, a piece of himself broke. That was why she did not want him wishing to be strong, wishing to be violent for her sake.  
  
Juzo with his lead pipe came for the young master next. Peko tried to defend him but the young master pushed her away. “Let me handle it myself!” He faced it head on, standing up the pipe slammed into the side of his head but he did not back down.  
  
The young Yakuza had nothing more than his fists, and the rings that he wore over them but he hoped it would hurt. He slammed his fist into Juzo’s side, and Juzo barely reacted. “Ultimate Yakuza, is that even really a talent? Or did you get daddy to write you a check because his heir wasn’t good enough on his own.”  
  
Juzo brought his pipe down again and Fuyuhiko dodged. Fuyuhiko fought his fist up trying to connect the distance between them. If only he was strong like Juzo, if only he was tall and covered in muscle.  
  
If he was strong enough to fight on his own he never would have needed Peko. Peko could be somewhere else, living a normal life. Because he was born into the Yakuza, because he needed her by his side, she got dragged into this awful life with him.  
  
It was all his fault and he could not do a single thing to make up for it. He could not keep her away from violence and bloodshed. He could not give her the quiet life she deserved. A life with him meant that Peko, beautiful Peko, an already complete existence perfect just as she was, would end up dead clogging up a sewer grate.  
  
If he was not strong, he would lose her again and it would be all his fault. This time, this time, this time, this time, this time, this time, this time, this time, this time, this time.  
  
How many times had he lost somebody and made an excuse?  
I was useless for Natsumi but I’ll protect Peko, I’ll protect what I have left.  
I was useless to stop the Kuzuryuus from falling down but I’ll protect what I have left.  
All he did was make sitty excuses, and continue living. Why was he always the one who survived?  
  
Fuyuhiko picked up Pekoyama’s sword and met Juzo’s lead pipe head on. He wielded the weapon with no grace at all, just brutal, violent, strength. This was just a dirty street fight between the two of them, all they could do was kick, and scrape, and try to gauge out each other’s eyes.  
  
“Tch, puffing out your chest trying to be strong. The hell good does that do you? Like strength means anything at all.” Juzo growled, as he swept low with his feet to knock Fuyuhiko on the ground. It did not work all the way, but Fuyuhiko’s stance got so unsteady he had to go on the defensive.  
  
“That girl you’re fighting so hard for, she could get sick and die at any time, or she could be hit randomly by a car. That’s not wanting to protect someone that’s just wanting to be in control.” His foot slammed into Fuyuhiko’s stomach. How worthless strength was. He wanted to show Fuyuhiko. Over and over again.  
  
Being stronger than other people.  
All that meant was hurting them more than they hurt you.  
Worthless.  
  
“Besides, I don’t think you have it in you. You just can’t be the piece of shit you’re trying so hard to be. It’s cute though, seeing little kids playing pretend.”  
  
The pipe hit the side of his face, and Fuyuhiko’s eyepatch fell off. Something fell out of his eye socket and rolled onto the floor. Fuyuhiko scrambled to put his hands over it, before he placed it in his eye socket once more.  
  
“Kid…”  
  
“I need. It. I need it to be strong like her. I can’t lose again. If I lose one more thing I’ll have lost everything. I need to be strong. I need to be a villain that never loses. That’s why I stole a piece of her. That’s why I’m going to make her strength mine…” Fuyuhiko babbled suddenly, his hand covering one eye. “What the hell do you even know? You don’t know anything at all about Peko and me!”  
  
He picked up the sword with one hand, and sliced. Though skin, tearing apart what was in front of him, seeing blood.  
  
Juzo did not defend that time, because he thought Fuyuhiko was right. He did not know anything. The words he said. _That was just what I wanted to hear._ He was so…  
  
Full of confidence despite not having anything.  
Full of pride despite being completely empty.  
  
But still, he wondered for a fleeting moment. _Is Munakata afraid to lose me?_ The same way that Fuyuhiko was afraid to lose that girl, as much as she feared losing him.  
  
But that… That was not what the old Munakata would say.  
The old Munakata would not want to try to control him to protect him. Imagining his Munakata acting like that, it made him feel like all of these feelings belonged to a stranger.  
  
The Munakata he knew. Was that the same Munakata he wanted to protect? Was that the same man he was fighting for right now? If Munakata became happy like that without him, would he feel happy at all?  
  
He was such an idiot. Here he was, getting into fights, running his mouth, without knowing a single thing. “Are you even angry for her sake? Does she even want you to get yourself broken like an idiot in her name?”  
  
What the hell was he saying?  
The one who was breaking. It was him.  
  
“SHUT UP ALREADY!”   
  
Juzo tossed his pipe to the side. “Take your prince and leave already. I’m not going to hurt Yukizome’s students right in front of her.” He said, not speaking to Fuyuhiko but Pekoyama who had been quiet the entire time.  
  
Pekoyama wanted to be that boy’s sword. He wanted to be Munakata’s strength.  
No, was that what they really wanted?  
  
Still, it hurt him just a little bit. The idea of this boy getting any more broken while that girl was watching. He would feel the same way, if he saw Munakata or Chisa get hurt in front of him. He was all twisted up inside about it and felt like crying, and hated himself for being so soft.  
  
“Just get out of my sight. You’re pissing me off.”  
He had no idea if he was talking to Pekoyama, or himself. 

🧸

Pekoyama did not put him down, despite his protests about finishing the fight until they were back at the hospital. Kirumi had recovered enough that she could follow from a short distance behind.  
  
Just like when Natsumi died, Pekoyama tried to talk to him, but he shut the door in her face. All she could do was sit on the other side of the door waiting for him to cool down. She could not wander far away from him even when he was mad at her, or when he did not want her, due to the forbidden action on his bracelet.  
  
“I sympathize with the young master. So afraid of losing others.” Kirumi said, next to her. For once there was no steel hiding behind the silk of her words. Even Pekoyama lowered her guard just a little. “Do you and him have any friends outside of each other?”  
  
They had Komaeda, but he was gone.  
Hinata was acting differently than he usually did.  
Pekoyama could not think of a good answer, so she just remained silent.  
  
Kirumi sat down as well, the many folds of the fabric of her dress they fell around her looking like a black flower slowly unfurling. “I had a friend once.”  
  
“What were they like?”  
  
“A fool, just like you. That’s why I feel the need to remind you of your foolishness.” Kirumi said, sounding like a strict and cold mother. She sometimes wondered how they felt, mothers who used to be warm and caring, feeling their own affection for their child flicker away like a dying flame. That feeling of slowly growing cold until no warmth was left in your body. Did they miss the person they once were? Did they miss the love they were able to show?

 _What am I a nagging mother?_  
She mumbled to herself in a self-depecating way. For her to save someone, for her to even think that. For her to think she knew better than anyone else when she had turned out this way. For her to even be in a situation for that, she had never even imagined.  
  
For a crystal clear moment as she gazed into Pekoyama’s eyes and saw a familiar red, she thought. There was a chance for atonement? Or punishment? She did not feel that she could nullify destroying someone by saving someone - though she did not know what it meant to save someone in the first place.  
  
Obviously.  
Obviously, she was just being a cruel mistress. On some level she knew that.  
  
Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko, they were both thieves who spent their entire lives killing and taking from others. They were each other’s spider thread, their salvation. 

 _Before he could even cry out, Kandata fell slicing through the air, spinning like a top, head first into the darkest depths._  
  
If Kirumi were to see such a thread offered down to her to climb up.  
She would slice it to pieces before her eyes.  
She was tired of hanging on a string, just let her fall already.   



	31. She's a Rainbow

Enoshima Junko and Kurokami Medaka what was the difference between the two of them? 

Are they so similar that their situations could have easily been reversed.  
If on that day at the clinic Matsuda had met Kurokami would he be her beloved childhood friend.  
If Enoshima arrived at the clinic and befriended the child of the head doctor Hitomi would Zenkichi be the irreplaceable thing she destroyed to taste that despair?

Medaka observed on the countless monitors that she passed throughout the city, that Junko and Zenkichi were getting along well. They were not friends, nor were they even enemies, but you would expect a hero of justice to reject everything about Junko. Yet, he spoke with her every day, made her food, checked on her, even if he did gripe.  
  
Medaka wondered if the feed was cutting to Zenkichi on purpose every time Medaka walked by, just to show her what she did not want to see. She would have preferred if Zenkichi and Junko hated each other, or if they fell madly in love, the sight of them getting along at a comfortable distance was unbearable to her.

It reminded her too much of her own relationship with Zenkichi, loving from a comfortable distance, hating from a comfortable distance. Medaka always thought of herself as a unique existence, she had been told over and over again how special she was, and for the first time she felt like she could be easily replaced.  
  
Logically she knew, Zenkichi lived his entire life for her sake. Yet, her brain would not be convinced that easily, it was strange she just kept thinking. She thought about how easy it would be to cut off Zenkichi from everybody else. If she were to become the enemy of the world, Zenkichi would still remain her ally. _Zenkichi could be mine._ She wanted to hold onto him the same way a little girl would hug and squeeze the life out of a stuffed animal. Zenkichi was there, the same boy as always, but it was so hard to see him as human, as if somebody had removed all of the meat from inside him and replaced him with plush. A doll. A beautiful doll that was all hers.  
  
Medaka slapped the sides of her cheeks to bring herself back to reality.  
  
Medaka loved humans, and Junko was indifferent to them. That was the difference between them, that was what Medaka told herself over and over again. It was important to her, that Medaka remain Medaka and Junko remain Junko. It was a relationship as important as protagonist and antagonist. 

But black and white distinctions like that are better left in stories. It’s not human. As the person who hates her the most here’s my opinion of Medaka, she loves people but she’s not capable of loving one person. It’s almost as if loving people is a substitute for her.

As for Junko she’s not indifferent to a single human being, but she only acknowledges three people as human beings in the first place. Ikusaba Mukuro, Matsuda Yasuke, and Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
Can you imagine it? If Medaka were to give herself to just one person, giving up everything about herself, her pride, her strength, her individuality, to be dependent on somebody else, so deeply in love she wants all of her to be accepted.  
  
If she were to pour all of her love for humanity in one person, to forget about the rest of humanity and love only then, I could see her becoming a victim. Killing people for that person, destroying hope for that person, hurting that person so they would accept her even at her worst.  
  
I mean Orihara Izaya and Kurokami Medaka both love humanity right, so how come it’s creepy when he does it and beautiful when she does it? It’s all about framing people, but in real life there is no frame. Real life is a portrait that’s neither beautiful or ugly, it’s not even a portrait. 

Either way that was why following a few steps behind her, Matsuda could feel nothing but apprehension for Medaka, as a person who had destroyed and been destroyed out of ‘love.’  
  
He asked to speak with Medaka alone. That was why nobody else was here, except Nananami who was able to watch from afar with her extraordinary eyes. 

“Are you really okay trusting someone like me? For Enoshima’s sake… no, for my own, I could betray you at any time.”  
  
“Yasuke said with a serious pinched expression on his face, as he angsted, quite angstily!” Medaka cheerfully replied.  
  
“Don’t narrate my life!”  
  
“Hey, let’s have another one of those philosophical conversations that everybody else is always having! I feel left out you know! The one and only Kurokami Medaka is being excluded even though she’s the main character. Shouldn’t the main character be the most popular one?” Medaka rambled for a bit in a way too familiar to Yasuke before she changed her tune and asked a serious question. “If you tell me ahead of time that you’re betraying me, is it really a betrayal? I mean, betrayals require actively trusting people in the first place. It’s a matter of perspective.”  
  
“Who knows? If I stick my foot up your ass, and it comes out of your mouth have I really stuck my foot up your ass? It’s a matter of perspective.”  
  
“Yasuke’s awakened to a new kind of fetish. You’re right I really am scared of being alone with you now.”  
  
“Please, it is a serious moment.”  
  
“But everything’s a serious moment to you, since you never smile. It’s-it’s a matter of perspective you see, if you’re always serious isn’t that the same as always joking around?”   
  
“Oh my god, why can’t I manage a single normal conversation here?”  
  
“If everything is abnormal, then isn’t that just normal?” 

“Please stop fooling around! Do you have an illness where you can only be serious for five seconds?” Since when had Medaka grown up enough to be able to mess with people like this? Just where did she acquire this cheek? Between her and Kamukura, someone around here was being a terrible example for all of these impressionable geniuses. _Oh, it’s me._ Matsuda realized.

“You’re so boring… boring. Idiot. Dumbass. I hate Yasuke.” Apparently she hated him right now, but she changed her mind rather quickly. “Besides, you were the one who said something stupid to begin with. I would rather trust people and betrayed, then doubt people and remain safe.” 

That was right. That was the beautiful way to live.  
_But, Medaka-chan it’s not like you trust a person._ _  
_ _You just trust people._ _  
_ _You value the ideal of trusting people over the people themselves._ _  
_ _You always love ideals over people. No wonder Zenkichi is so lonely._ _  
_ _Have you ever trusted someone? Have you ever chosen to trust them?_ _  
_ _Instead of blindly accepting everything about them?_ _  
_ _If you really trusted someone, and then were betrayed by that person._ _  
_ _Would you be able to say that so easily?_

“Don’t call me Yasuke.”  
  
Matsuda said, he took another step away from her. Then Medaka took a step closer to him. For a girl who had such supreme self confidence she sure was clingy. The three of them together might as well be called the desperation trio.  
  
“I’ll call you Matsuda-kun, then…”

 _I want to go where Matsuda-kun is. I want to see Matsuda-kun again. Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun._  
  
Ahhh - really.  
_Please don’t look at me. I don’t want to be seen by those eyes._ _  
_ _Truly loving me. Loving me just for being me. Loving me was enough._ _  
_ _I was enough._ _  
_ _That was why._ _  
_ _I hated her._  
  
That was what scared him, not her resemblance to Junko, but rather to Ryoko. That super ugly and annoying girl that was bothering him. That girl that loved him. That loved only him, and not despair.  
  
Ryoko, a carefree girl completely detached from the world around her. Other people’s pain, their struggles, their misery, it had nothing to do with her and because she could forget them easily she kept smiling. She had no friends, no family, utterly alone and yet she was happy, no she did not even miss those things in the first place because she did not know about them. That was why she was happy just with him.  
  
Even if he made her cry, even if he spat nothing but hate on her, she would smile only at him.  
If Enoshima Junko was a fake, then Otonashi Ryoko was undeniably a real girl.  
Her laughter was real, her love for him was real.  
He thought it was what he wanted, a Junko that cared only about him, a Junko that remembered only him, a Junko that would choose him over despair. The girl that existed in his childhood memories, the ditzy childhood friend, annoying, and irresponsible the one he thought he had all along was right in front of him. The real thing, and he hated her.  
  
“Well, all your issues boil down to what Enoshima did to you, so it’s not really you’re fault.”  
  
“No, that’s not true. There was another girl who loved me. She was just like you, Enoshima’s opposite, at times she got angry, at times she cried, at times she smiled, but she was always herself. She cried for me, she loved me, she helped me, she wanted to save me…she completely trusted me.”  
  
“Eh… but, I’m not that person. Even I think that girl sounds too ideal.”  
  
Not similar.  
Just projecting a similar person onto her.  
  
“Yeah, I thought so too. A person like this cannot exist. That was why I - broke that thing.  I wrapped my hands around -that thing’s - neck. That’s what I did with her trust.” 

“...”  
  
“So, I don’t think I was tricked by Junko in any way. No matter how hard I tried, I could not love her, so that means I love the Junko that betrayed me. I love the Junko that would always love despair more than me… that’s why…” 

If it were only something as simple as being desperate for love.  
If it was just that he would not be suffering so much.  
  
“Trust is sad, Kurokami. Trust is very sad. I think it’s better if you stay that way, trusting people, getting betrayed recklessly. The alternative is worse, you break, you crumble, and you can never be back again.”  
  
“Even so, being alone is lonely.”  
  
“Even so, I will live alone.” Matsuda replied, feeling like a smart aleck. “If tell me I cannot live alone, then I would rather die.”  
  
That was what he promised himself. He decided he would live that way, to atone after depending so much on Junko he would learn to live on his own. He said that, and yet he clearly ran to Medaka’s side. Why was he so stubborn?  
  
If he could truly live alone he would be much happier. If he could commit suicide that would be the best. Yet, here he was again, clinging to the nearest person available while pretending to be a loner.  
  
“Matsuda-kun, you’re lying aren’t you?” Medaka’s eyes, those red eyes, saw right through him. “Normally, if I saw someone I would sympathize with their pain first before anything else but hmm, your pain is kind of boring I guess? I don’t get it. The solution is so obvious it’s right there in front of you, but you look away.”  
  
Kurokami Medaka said in a voice that chilled Yasuke to the bone. “Do you want to be sympathized with that badly? You keep dragging other people into your own narcissism, what do I have to do with any of that? If you want to brood, then brood by yourself. Nobody in the world will understand a freak like you and nobody cares anyway. You just keep making excuses, you just keep lying, hey, hey, hey, hey since when did despair the status queue? Wouldn’t hope be the less boring option?”

For once in his life Matsuda had absolutely nothing to say. “Well shit, I guess you’re right. I just got owned by a teeanger, I don’t think it’s possible to get more owned than this.”  
  
“Of course I’m right. Hmm, weird I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit smarter, like I’m more right than I was before.” Medaka said, as she suddenly gripped one of her eyes to deal with the sudden  shooting headache. It was like something behind her eyeballs was digging, trying to get out. She started to lose strength in her legs so suddenly, that Matsuda had to rush her side and support her with his shoulder.  
  
Nanami smiled.  
Her smiles always filled with sarcasm and malice, but the way she smiled now it was a smile of happiness she did not even think she was capable of making. If Yasuke saw it, he might even start to develop feelings for her, that was how happy she was, how full of contentment, as she watched Medaka slowly start to change.  
  
🧸

 

“You know I’m still hiding things from you, right?”

“So what? Suddenly, it’s like I know your entire life and it was much smaller than I expected it to be. So small and petty, Matsuda-kun. Everybody has such a rich internal world, yeah, yeah, that’s what I’ve been told but those worlds are small, small as the marbles kids play with.” Medaka smiled at him. “So I think it’s fine, I don’t think a person like you could even hurt me.” 

 _I don’t get why people are afraid of dolls._ _  
_ _They don’t move on their own unless someone else moves them._ _  
_ _Sure they’re a little creepy but that’s all. That’s just baseless superstition. There’s nothing there to be afraid of._  
  
Junko said to him once, another one of his childhood memories. God, did Junko spend their entire childhood foreshadowing her eventual betrayal! What an annoying girl. He hated her. 

  
“Also, you smell.”  
  
“Okay, now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings. How dare you. Only I’m allowed to hurt my feelings.” 

  
Medaka waved a hand excitedly in front of his face. Who gave this kid too much sugar? “No, no, I mean you look like somebody dragged you out of a grave.”  
  
“Well, that is pretty much what happened to me. My favorite asshole Kumagawa wouldn’t let me sleep.”  
  
“You should take care of yourself a little more.”  
  
“Why would I do that? Then I might actually start to like myself a little.” Matsuda was grossed out at the idea.  
  
“Okay, let’s go bathe together Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“What the hell?” Now, Matsuda was genuinely terrified for his life. _No, don’t hold me in your big strong arms and crush me to death, Hitoyoshi-kun._  
  
“What’s the big deal? I bathed with HItoyoshi-kun when I was younger. And he’s the only one I have feelings for not you.”  
  
“I don’t really want to look at your naked body.”  
  
“Hey, what’s wrong with my naked body? I won’t stand for this insult! You wish you could look at my naked body, it’ll be the the most beautiful light you’ve ever seen. You’ll break into tears and remember that there are still beautiful things in this world after all.” 

Emukae suddenly raised her hand. “I want to bathe with Matsuda-kun, too!”  
  
“I don’t want to be left out!” Mikan raised her hand as well.  
  
“Perverts! You’re all perverts!” Matsuda crossed his hands over his chest as if they were trying to hide something. “Stay away from a pure innocent virgin like me!” 

In the end they found a bathing house, but Matsuda managed to complain enough that nobody followed him into the baths. Wait, what was a working bathing house doing in a city like this anyway? It was like someone purposefully set that up with this scene in mind.  
  
Just when Matsuda finished unbuttoning his dirty white shirt, he heard an emotionless voice behind him. 

“Hey, you. The one with the face, and the name that’s probably not worth remembering.”  
  
“Oh hey, you got my character description exactly.” Matsuda turned around to see Nanami. Red eyes, similar but different to Junko’s. If Junko’s eyes discerned every detail, eyes that knew you better than you yourself did, then Matsuda saw he was just an indistinct blur in Nanami’s eyes.  
  
How comforting. She had such pretty eyes, shining red jewels, he wanted to scoop them out and keep them all to himself.  
  
“Hey, you.” It seemed that was his name now. Rather than taking an interest in him, she looked at him like he was the person who interested her least in the whole world. It was good to know he was special. “Take my Kimono off of me.”  
  
“What, are you some little kid who needs someone else to dress and undress her?” 

“I know I look like a child but secretly I’m five thousand years old.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No, that’s stupid. I just suffer from malnutrition.” _I’m exactly your age, you know._ “You’re a shitty doctor making fun of my height like that.”  
  
“Well you seem like a shitty patient to deal with. You remind me of this kid who used to have fun pissing off therapists.” Komaeda’s smile appeared like a ghost in the corner of his eyes. “Mm, just call me shitty doctor that’s better than my name.”   
  
“So. Take my kimono off.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“It’s covered in blood. I don’t want to touch it, blood has germs and germs make me sick. More sick.” That made sense. “Also, I’m a lady, I deserve to be spoiled.” Matsuda immediately regretted sympathizing with her for even a moment.  
  
“Should I close my eyes?”  
  
“I do not care if someone like you sees me or not, because I am going to forget what your face looks like in a few minutes anyway.”  
  
Cold.  
Her body was the exact opposite of Kamukura and Junko.  
Their perfect bodies.

Her imperfection.  
  
The way their bodies ebbed and flowed, as if they were made from seafoam. As if God had designed them as someone to be loved.   
  
But Nanami was an exquisite imperfection, almost artistic. Her body crumbled away slowly before his eyes. If the Venus de Milo did not break in such a beautiful way would anybody even remember it? Anyone can paint a painting, anyone can carve from smooth marble, all it requires is technical skill, but that’s not human.  
  
She looked human that was the best way to describe it, that utterly vague nondescription. 

Dancing like mist on water. A chilling sensation like frost on his fingertips, and suddenly he could not move his hands. It was like they were no longer his own, they belonged to her.  
  
Looking at her was soft, as if being embraced.  
Looking at her was an act of violence, as if tearing someone away.  
  
She was invisible. An invisible girl, a pure mind, pure eyes, out of nothing, pure thinking.  
Something like darkness, something like silence.  
Dark green hair that fell all the way to her feet. Her hair is so beautiful, too he wondered if she would be angry if he touched it. 

And that girl was barely holding onto life. Her whole self was painted a pale white, she was not a pale corpse, she was a colorless skeleton. She probably had no bones, just pure, clear, transparent crystal underneath her skin. The kind of person so fragile you were afraid to touch them.  
  
Ah, no it was Komaeda he was thinking about. Komaeda was the same as her, that was the feeling he was reminded of, overcame by in that moment. Two shoulders, and hips, and upper legs, and lower legs, and hands and a body that was just flesh, and bones and nothing else.  
  
If he looked at her for too long she might break. He only touched the cloth of her kimono and nothing else. He had been afraid too, so afraid to touch Komaeda, it felt wrong, dirty, to even look.  
  
And even if she.  
Even if he was on the brink of death.  
He looked more alive than anybody else, like a flower that bloomed only once.  
  
“What are you staring at me for? How impolite.” 

“No, not really. It is nothing," Matsuda said.   
  
“Oh, really?”  
  
“Yes, really, but Nanami …” Can I touch your hair, he was about to say, the words he always wanted to say to Komaeda too _touching it must be what clouds feel like_ but he caught himself at the last moment. Asking a question like that out of the blue, he would sound like just a pathetic, lonely, boy. He had to explain how he felt, how fragile she looked. How he did not want to touch someone like her without permission, because maybe... others had touched her only to hurt her in the past. others had touched Komaeda only to hurt him.  The words he wanted them to hear. The words they deserved to hear. He wanted to be the one to say them, to put those feelings to words.  
  
“Yes, what is it?” 

 _Hey, Kumagawa. You always made more friends than I did. You’re the one who understood Junko in the end. What would you say if you were here?_  
  
“Nanami, can I touch your breasts?”

_Kumagawa, I hate you more than I hate myself._

Nanami fell face flat on the ground. It was the first time Matsuda had seen someone trip like that with their legs sticking straight up. Oh, it must have been because one of her legs was still in a cast. Not his fault at all.  
  
Unlike Medaka I love jokes, but I should seriously stop joking around.  
  
Matsuda and Nanami sat on opposite ends of the bath, with a curtain drawn between them. It was like they were together but apart, which was the way Matsuda preferred it anyway.  
  
“Are you aware of what an idiot plot is, Dr. Jankenstein?”  
  
Damnit. That nickname was actually funny. He wished he had thought of it. “Something that Kumagawa Misogi would read.”  
  
“I don’t know who that is,” Nanami said, and then. “Don’t you think the nickname I came up with was cute and fun?”  
  
Jeez. Had this girl never been praised in her life? “It’s a plot only held together by the stupid decisions the characters make.”  
  
“Then, why not just tell Kurokami Medaka about who I really am? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for me.” Nanami asked.   
  
“No way. I’m not that cruel. I don’t want to inflict the disaster that is my love life on anybody else.” Yasuke retorted.   
  
“How noble of you," Nanami's sarcasm was hard to discern when she said everything in the same tone of voice. He could close his eyes and pretend he was praising her.   
  
“Religion tells us to separate ourselves from all earthly desire, so I think I’m a regular saint for not giving a shit about anybody besides myself.”  
  
“Dirty mouth. Someone should wash it out with soap," She scolded him like a child.   
  
“God, I just wish someone would shut me up because obviously I’m incapable of doing it myself.” Nanami laughed, girlish. A normal girl’s laugh. Matsuda was caught off guard for a moment.   
  
The smile that Junko gave Kumagawa. A smile without any cynicism, a smile without despair, he wanted her to smile at him that way just once. _Laugh at me. Please._ He was begging. “Even if I told her, she’d still choose to trust you that’s all.”  
  
Trust was something that could break, and along with it affection slowly bled out like a fatal wound, and he would be left alone again. 

“So it’s not an idiot plot. It’s a failure of communication, a comedy of errors. Hey, hey, who are you secretly in disguise as?”  
  
“I pretend my life is tragic but actually, everyone’s laughing at me," Yasuke said with a tragic expression on his face. 

“If you just admitted to being an idiot instead of trying to sound smart you could have saved me time.”

“I’d hate to waste your precious time," Yasuke ran his mouth.   
  
“I have so little of it left, you know.”  
  
“Ah…Sorry.” He was apologizing to the girl who was secretly planning to kill them all. No wait, he was just talking to her like a normal conversation. There was something seriously, seriously wrong with him. Maybe he was exactly the kind of person who could be friends with Enoshima Junko.  
  
“What was Enoshima Junko like?" Nanami asked that question as if she read his mind. Maybe she did.   
  
“She’s…” Matsuda knew that Junko viewed herself as monochromatic, as lacking in color. He always wanted to tell her she was wrong. She was just lacking in self awareness, that was all. _I’ve been watching you all this time._ He wanted to tell her. He wanted her to know.  
  
She was colors, all of them, all at once, mixing together overwhelming him.  
_She’s a rainbow._  
He saw her in the water he stared into. Just her shape, and colors that blurred all the lines.  
  
Bubbles of paint floating up through the air, and when popped they exploded colors everywhere. A splash of seawater formed from water colors right to the face. A wave washing over all of him, immersing him. He sank deep into her and was dyed by her. The color sank in underneath his skin, and soaked into his bones.  
  
He had a dream.  
A dream of her.  
A beautiful dream.  
A beautiful life with her.  
  
He drank the paint to color his insides her color. The colors of the rainbow changed at her whims. He was reduced to a child, just wanting to be held by her.

That was why. That was why.  
He did not want to be alone anymore.

Her hands red at the tips of her nails slowly reached out of the water and gently held his face from both sides. But that wasn’t… Her. That was it. He did not hate Ryoko. It was just, he had truly loved Junko. He plunged both of his hands in reaching for her neck, to break the surface of the water, to destroy her reflection in the water.  
  
“She was someone I loved.”  
  
“But are your feelings real? It might be a misunderstanding. Admiration and jealousy, compassion and curiosity, pity and disdain, are good friends you know? You’re so inundated with those feelings you might just be mistaken.”   
  
“Yeah, I really loved her.”  
  
Is this what they called coming to terms with things?  
Goddamnit, it sucked. No wonder he wanted to keep pining forever.  
  
“You had someone to love. How nice for you. I’m jealous. Really, really, I’m jealous.” 

 

🧸

 

She had no idea how to describe it.  
It was just like things were moving slower than she would have liked them to.  
If it were raining right now, she felt like she could see every individual raindrop fall and count them.

It was like the world was a crystal clear snowglobe, but completely in suspension. INstead of fluttering everywhere, the all white snow just stayed in the air, hung there as if it was on strings. The more she watched it, the more desperate she became for someone to shake the snowglobe. She could see a much colorful, much larger life on the other side of the glass wall but she was stuck away from it.  
  
One sheet of glass was all that kept her from escaping this snow globe.  
It would be so easy to break that. The barrier between herself and others.  
  
A spider watching the world through eight eyes, but she only had two. It was impossible for her to parse all the information, like it was too much for her. It’s like watching a tv. She was alone in a room locked in with a television. No, the entire room was covered in televisions, all four floors, so it was impossible for her to just look away if she got bored. Her eyelids were transparent so if she closed them she just saw it playing still on the inside of her eyelids.  
  
She had no remote. She could not turn them off. She could not smash them. She could not change the channels. All she could do was watch. It was she had acquired several more brains and then crammed them into the tiny space of her skull.  
  
She felt like she knew everything, but she felt utterly helpless at the same time. There was too much, too much being crammed into her eyeballs, and it felt like her head was going to burst. Her headaches had gotten worse recently, and all she could do was clutch her head in pain.  
  
It really was just like watching everything happen from behind a glass television screen. She had been watching Zenkichi on this television for the last hour, the boy that had always enchanted her, the boy that she was obsessed with, and yet she had the feeling _was Zenkichi always this stupid._  
  
What he should do was so obvious to her, and yet he did not do it. It was so easy but they were all pretending it was hard. Did they just want to dawdle around all day getting nothing done? 

People would continue to hurt her.  
And she would care about their feelings first.

And she would save them.  
And she would swallow her own pain.  
Save.  
Swallow.  
It’s a taste that nobody knows. The taste of other’s pain.  
Like ingesting a rag used to wipe up someone else's filthy blood.   
For whom?  
It kept running through her head.  
  
She was so lonely? Why? Ah, it was because they all outcast her. They left her alone. They did not try to understand her. She was just a crying girl you know? She was just a lonely girl all along, and not a single person would sympathize with her. Because they were all too wrapped up in their own boring problems. It was their fault not hers, they should have tried harder. 

_Zenkichi, you’re pushing yourself so hard to be worthy of me? Why are you crying so much? That’s how it is. That’s how it should be. You should be a better person for the person you like. Wanting to be loved just as you are, that’s just narcissism._

Narcissism like Enoshima Junko, but she was different.  
She was-

Insane.  
  
“Ah, I’m going insane aren’t I?” Kurokami Medaka chuckled, it sounded like a lion’s rumble. “No, this isn’t me. Kurokami Medaka cannot go insane.”

 _“You thought you were better didn’t you?”_  
Zenkichi’s voice whispered into her ear.  
_“You just thought you were a better person than everyone around you being affected by trauma. You looked down on them and thought you were better for not letting it affect you.”_

“N-no, at the time I really wanted to help them. I wanted to sympathize with them.” 

Ysuke watched her, as he toweled up his hair. He had finished washing his clothes. He felt clean for the first time in awhile, but he would be dirty soon in no time at all. Even so. He watched Kurokami Medaka from behind and remembered a familiar scene.

In middle school the two of them were inseparable. He used to think Junko was an idiot, but she had gotten into the same elite prep school as him just to be with him. She barely paid attention in class, and when they passed back her test scores with 100s on them in the corner in red she folded them up into paper airplanes and threw them from the rooftop.  
  
At the time he thought she was just a weird girl. A girl too weird to be friends with anyone else, she was too energetic, too bright, too blunt, too rude, always doing things her own way, she was just too much. He was the only one who could accept her just as she was, he was the one who had been by her side all this time.  
  
It began as a childish urge to protect her, because that girl was always getting in trouble, and of course as they matured their feelings grew into something deeper. It was like something out of a story, no Junko probably copied it out of some story in retrospect. Everyone said that they were together, but they were more than friends and not quite lovers. Last week they had kissed for the first time, Junko jokingly suggesting it as a way to prove everyone wrong. To prove that they were still just friends.  
  
When he kissed her, he lied and said he felt nothing, while feeling everything.  
He was so overwhlemed with happiness at such a small gesture he wanted to cry.  
She was the only one he cried for, she was the only one he smiled for.  
  
That was their relationship, more or less. They ate on the school roof every day, because idiots liked high places.  
  
Junko leaned on the railing. “They’re so tiny, I wish they would bounce off of each other more. Hmm, do you think this is why god stays in heaven just watching instead of snapping his fingers and solving everything? Because it’s more fun that way?”  
  
“I think god is a brat whose too full of herself and never shuts up.”

Junko turned around, the cherubic smile of an ordinary girl. She was not laughing out of sarcasm, nor laughing out of innocence, she just thought he was funny, just a pure smile. Then suddenly, her smile faded.  
  
Junko was many things, but insecure was never one of them. He had never seen her avert her eyes like this. “Hey, what if all of our memories were fake. Will the two of us be able to stay like this?”  
  
That smile.  
The smile he loved so much. He needed to reassure her. Tell her how he felt. That girl, always smiling, always laughing, always causing trouble, somehow looked lonelier than anybody else. “Memories are wrong to begin with. Nobody’s memories are exact, they’re stored in pieces and reconstructed into approximations. Remembering is the process of recreating them as fakes, and experiencing them again.”  
  
“Hey, Yasuke-kun. Did you know, sexy nerds are my type? It’s my forbidden shame as a cool girl, as my only friend I’m trusting you to keep it a secret.” 

“How can you be a cool girl if you only have me as a friend?” Matsuda said, as he stood up and stretched out to lean over the railing next to her. He wanted to be sure, just in case she fell, that he could reach out and grab onto that hand. “I think you should accept that you and I are here together as an outcome. You don’t need to overthink it, just being together is enough.”  
  
“Hmm, what if someone confessed to me. What would you do, Yasuke-kun?”  
  
“I would thank them for taking you off my hands.”  
  
“I want to like this world. This world where I met you, but it’s so… I can’t stay here forever.”  
  
“Stay here? Eh? Are you going somewhere? You’re being weird again.” Junko who was always cheerful, she sometimes, became oddly distant. She liked to mess around and laugh, and yet she seemed far more serious than any girl her age. “I don’t really get what you’re saying.”

“Yeah, sorry. I wish I could put it in a way you could understand.” 

 _I wish._ _  
_ _You would follow me._  
  
“Don’t talk about stupid things. You can’t disappear from this world, you can’t.” He grabbed her arm forcefully and pulled her back, she was leaning too far from the edge.  
  
Ah, he had been so afraid of losing he that he rejected her. He did not want to hear the word goodbye, so he blocked out everything she was saying. 

Junko deceived him all that time, but maybe she was just like a little kid hoping to get caught in her lie and lectured. That brat. He hated her. At the time he ignored her, he saw Junko slipping away and he did nothing.   
  
Medaka’s eyes were becoming distant like Junko’s.  
As if the whole world were blurry. 

 _You love humans don't you? So does that mean you love their ugliness as well? Their lies?_  
  
He reached out and grabbed her by the arm. He held onto her. What was he doing? What was he seeking? Atonement? Punishment? He did not feel that he could nullify his failure with Junko, by saving Medaka - though he did not know what saving someone even meant.  
  
He tried to use his words to drag her back to where he was.  
  
“Hey, don’t be dumb Medaka-chan.” 

 


	32. Self Inflicted Achromatic

**DAY FIVE END**

Hinata Hajime, Kamukura Izuru, Hinata Izuru, Kamukura Hajime, no matter how his name changed he felt like he had not taken a single step out of that white room.  
  
He thought of his colorful friends.  
Fuyuhiko black and yellow.  
Peko silver and red.  
Tanaka black and purple.  
Sonia gold and pink.  
Mikan pink and blue.  
Kazuichi pink and yellow.

As they passed before his eyes, Kazuichi got into an argument with one of Gundham’s hamsters with Gundham glaring daggers and muttering some imaginary spell under his breath. Sonia walked ahead of both of them smiling sweetly like she did not see them fighting and talked to Mikan. Fuyuhiko and Peko wanted to walk side by side, but everytime Peko got too close Fuyuhiko snapped at her.  
  
All he ever wanted was to be like them, to live colorful lives like they did. He thought if he were close to them, if he touched them, a few of their colors would rub off on him. _I wanna be like you I wanna say that I can. I wanna be the person that you think that I am._

He had a dream where he was walking among them. They all looked to him. But even then when he was at the center of the class, he felt like somebody else should be in his shoes.  They all wanted to see Hinata now, the regular boy he was on the island. He had become the imposter to his real self. 

There were two boys standing where he stood, their images became overlapped, and red and green mixed together into an awful color. As he watched the paint spin he looked back to the white room around him.  
  
In the end, he was the one choosing to stay in this room. He was too afraid that if one of the Ultimate Despairs came to reject him he would no longer be the real Hinata. So he rejected them, all the colors first, and stayed in this white room.  
  
A self-inflicted achromatic. 

Staring at a white wall all day was boring. If he had to make a choice, it was between two completely white boxes of equal size. Therefore it was impossible for him to choose. In a world without color, in a world he could not interact with, reach out and touch, it was hard for him to believe any of his choices mattered.  
  
He wondered if anybody would blame him, stuck in this room as he was if he just wanted some toys to play with. As long as he kept them safe in the toybox he could keep playing with them forever.  
  
He did not know what was inside of himself, so he wanted to see what was inside other people. That was why their stuffing ended up coming loose, as they were left on the floor of his playroom. There were no windows and no doors, only four walls and a ceiling and floor.  
  
That was why he started to tear people open, to the paint the walls the same colors as their insides. It was precisely when he saw all the broken toys at his feet that he realized how lonely he was.  
  
Hinata woke with a start and saw blurred and mixed colors in front of him vaguely in the shape of a person, with a hand on his shoulder. He remembered the images of people in hospital gowns, hovering over him, touching him with sterile hands.  
  
Fuyuhiko flew into a wall. “Shit. I’ve been a criminal all my life and I’m not nearly as jumpy as you are. You hiding something?” He asked as he dusted himself off, apparently getting thrown around was something he was used to.  
  
“I’m just easily excitable okay! Nothing scares me except ghosts, the dark, needles, rats, the idea someone might hate me, and thinking about the future.” 

“Ah yes, Izuru. That’s what I thought when I met him. Most exciting guy I ever met. He’s a fucking party.”  
  
“I think I was a boring person even before I became Kamukura.”  
  
“Yeah, probably.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to agree with me when I’m being insecure! The hell kind of right hand man are you anyway?”  
  
“Oh, then you should have said ‘Please kiss my ass for me Fuyuhiko otherwise I’m gonna start crying’.”  
  
“Maybe I will! Then I’ll tattle to Peko about you!” Crying and running to Peko sounded like a far more violent threat than holding a gun to his head. The mobster however, did not sweat. Perhaps that was the talent of the Ultimate Yakuza (Hinata still had no idea what that talent meant).  
  
“Jeez, I’m just razzing you. Did Matsuda forget to surgically remove the stick from your ass when he did all those surgeries on ya?” 

  
“D-did Matsuda ever remove the stick from your ass?” 

“So all those brains and that’s the best comeback you could come up with, repeating the same thing back at me with a slightly different tone of voice.”  
  
“I’m sorry?” Hinata had no idea why he was apologizing, in fact he totally lost control of this conversation.  
  
“Relax a little. Don’t you know how lowlife scum guys like us in the Yakuza get along?”  
  
“Umm… by stabbing each other…?”  
  
“Don’t you have the talent of the Ultimate Yakzua?”  
  
“Yeah… uh-wise guy.” If Hinata were here that was how he would respond to the conversation at least. Izuru wondered if anybody else spent so much time pretending to be themselves.  
  
“Anyway, I came here to tell you that you were pissing me off.”  
  
“Everybody pisses you off.”  
  
“That ain’t true! Only assholes do!”  
  
“That’s what you need to realize Kuzuryuu. Everybody here is an asshole.” _Except Medaka-chan._  
  
Kuzuryuu suddenly reached forward grabbing him by the necktie and yanking him back. He had large round prominent ears, and eyes that looked like his sister’s. His hair was the color of the sun and combed back. He had round cheeks covered in spots. If he were born into any other life, he would have been considered a handsome young man. It was so easy to love a face like that. But since he was born into the Yakuza he was reviled.  
  
Hinata wondered sometimes if Fuyuhiko resented him. Neither Peko or Fuyuhiko were given the choice of a normal life, but Hinata having the normal life they wanted so desperately, threw it away and chose their life. Then he went and got bored of it. The world they were born into, the world they were trapped in, he tried to leave and pretend to be a good person again.  
  
“I came to drag your ass out of here. Too much television is bad for you. You’re not supposed to sit so close either.”  
  
“Ah yes, I’m sure a yakuza would have good advice for how to live a safe and healthy life.”  
  
“See, you’ve got some bite to you too. I like you better this way, when you’re showing your teeth.” Fuyuhiko said, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him forward. Fuyuhiko’s hand reached out, and pulled him out of the room of white. But when he held onto Fuyuhiko Hinata had no idea if he was holding onto a friend, or a toy. 

If he really wanted to be comforted, he could squeeze Fuyuhiko in his arms like a stuffed bear until all of his insides came out. Fuyuhiko was so decent too, if he had been born to any other family he would be the protagonist, the hero of the story.  
  
The world was stuck with a useless second string protagonist like him. _“But you still view yourself as the protagonist, Hinata-kun?”_ A boy with no weight like a ghost whispered in his ear.  
  
When they got to the rooftop of the hospital, Fuyuhiko ran his hands down the collar of his shirt and started to work with the button.  
  
“Wait… why are we here? Why are you taking your shirt off? Are we going to get into a fight? Is this the climax of the story already? Won’t your nipples get cold?” Hinata asked so many questions in such a short time frame he already felt out of breath.  
  
Fuyuhiko slapped the inside of his thigh hard. “Come on, I’m getting sick of you hiding shit. So, let’s just bear it all, man to man. This way we’ve got no clothes to hide behind.”  
  
“So does the yakuza realize how gay that sounds or…” Hinata muttered as he carefully took the green jacket off and neatly folded it up. Then, his black jacket, and his button up shirt, he removed them and threw them behind him without a care. He sat crossed legged on the ground next to Fuyuhiko.   
  
“Obviously, we can’t drink-”  
  
“We’re both twenty now.”  
  
“Shit, then we’re not breaking any rules. I’m glad. We can do this with a clean conscience.” Fuyuhiko said, as he poured alcohol from the sake bottle on a dish for Hinata.

In the underground, there were only drunken fools and self proclaimed geniuses. As he took a sip Hinata wondered which one he was.  The underground was full of those wanting to use others, and wanting to be used. Perhaps that was why, why Fuyuhiko kept being so friendly to him.  
  
Hinata could see it. Even if he did not want to think that way. Even if he did not want to be that person. Fuyuhiko would never separate himself from the environment he was raised in. He did love Peko, but his love for her, was some violent, possessive emotion. It’s quite surreal, how love could eviscerate your sense of self for a moment, or an eternity. Pekoyama was the name of the blade that Fuyuhiko pushed into his stomach to tear it open.   
  
Not that Hinata was any better. The boy who lived to chase the feeling of dying. A wild longing for strong emotions, and sensations seethed in him, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. Being loved in a normal way was the only thing Komaeda ever wanted, and it was the one thing Hinata could not give him.  
  
Fuyuhiko had stolen this off the shelf somewhere and left money behind, even though the whole town was abandoned at night. Cheap Sake with lots of impurities, really suited his half hearted behavior.  
  
Hinata really wanted to kill someone. His sense of solitude. Or the boy next to him. Or even himself. He tipped the drink back, but it was impossible for him to say if it was good or bad tasting.  
  
“Come on man. There’s no point in this if you’re not going to talk.”  
  
Kamukura did not realize how long had passed without him talking. He slipped into silence, and started to fall without even realizing it now. The same way one day he had fallen down into a pool of black ink known as Izuru Kamukura, and pulled himself out of the water as someone else. He wondered if the corpse of the boy he left behind was still floating there. “You’re trying so hard to protect Peko this time around, but what would you do if she just walked away?”  
  
Fuyuhiko could not answer that question. He looked like he would break if he answered that question. “You’re a bitch.”  
  
Hinata flet a smile twitch on his lips when he saw the reaction on Fuyuhiko’s face. Then, with a fearless smile he said mockingly. “Are you angry?”  
  
“At what?”  
  
“At what… At me. There are so many reasons for you to hate me why don’t you get it?”  
  
“There are…”  
  
“...You realize I’m using you? The reason your parents died, you slaughtering the rest of the heads of the Kuzuryuu clan, Pekoyama falling to despair with you, I had a hand in all of that. I’ve been using you from the start!”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“What a disappointing reaction.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Everybody in my life’s tried to use me in some way. I know exactly the kind of person you are, so you can quit it with the act around me…” Fuyuhiko said as he picked the sake up himself and drank straight from the bottle. When he desperately gasped for air, Hinata got the feeling Fuyuhiko was trying to drown himself. “But you’re still the first person who ever approached me as a friend. I already decided I don’t care if this guy uses me.”   
  
Fuyuhiko suddenly broke the bottle against the edge of the roof, and then dragged the jagged edge across his roof. Hinata saw color, falling from Fuyuhiko’s arm. Hinata found himself mute, and they were both left with the muted sounds of wind traveling through an empty city in the background. 

  
And then, frowning, Fuyuhiko said slowly.  “I wish you’d use me a little more.”

Hinata really wished Fuyuhiko was a villain. Being around a hero like him made him feel like that broken bottle, empty, with everything falling out.So that was what it would be like, Hinata thought as he gazed longingly at Fuyuhiko, having friends and not just toys. 

 

🧸

 

“You can stop doing squats. Your muscles are big enough already.” Chisa said. Munakata had been in and out of sleep the entire week, which more often than not left her and Juzo alone together. 

“Hey, shut up! This helps me when I’m anxious.”  
  
“Poor Juzo. His biggest muscle is his heart.”  
  
Juzo stopped doing squats and paced over to her side of the room. If he was not exercising, he was pacing. He would probably be shadowboxing the air right now if he was not forbidden from throwing a punch. 

“You take that back. I’m a bastard and you know it.” When Chisa just smiled up at him, Juzo growled but turned away from her. He stared at the wall instead like he was trying to pick a fight against it. Even if it were against a brick wall Juzo would probably win. “I’m not like you, I can’t keep smiling no matter what. Don’t you think this is messed up? We should be getting these kids out of this place, but instead we just keep fighting against them.”  
  
“Hm.” Chisa leaned against the wall next to him. Juzo was the kind of person everybody assumed was a delinquent just from his size alone. The first day she met him was when he pushed another kid through the wall from the classroom next door.  
  
Everyone assumed he was going around picking fights to show off his talent, but it was the opposite. They constantly followed him around, looking for a fight with him. He had no concept of ‘mercy’ or ‘holding back’. Whenever someone started a fight, Juzo finished it.  
  
That was because he hated violence.  
His whole life could be summarized by that word alone, and so he detested those like himself who could only solve things with violence. He was far more sensitive than the average person, so when he threw a punch he felt it twice as much as others.  
  
He thought if he finished the fight as quickly as possible they would realize it was a bad idea to fight him. If he acted tough, nobody would approach him anymore. He needed to push them all away. He had to remove the people from before his eyes.  
  
Even when he saw blood drip to the floor from between his fingers, he had no hesitation.  
Again, and again.  
Unstoppingly.  
But even as he hit them, in his eyes he was always begging his opponent to take a dive.  
To just go down.  
  
When Chisa learned that was the kind of person he was, she knew no matter how much Juzo barked he would never bite. Someone like that who was willing to live all alone, to bark and scare off others if it kept them safe, was never going to harm the two people who decided to follow him anyway despite all his barking.  
  
Juzo was a person she felt safe around. He was far too kind. That was what she thought, even if it might make him happy he would swallow his real feelings for the fear of getting in between the two of them.  
  
Chisa was good at reading people, it was her only strong point. She leaned forward tilting her head and letting her red hair spill all around her. “You know what I think? Kyosuke got our roles all wrong, you should have been a teacher, I should have been the double agent.”  
  
“Huh? The hell you talking about?” Juzo’s voice suddenly became much quieter. “I don’t… I don’t have what it takes to guide other people.”  
  
“Weird. You always act like a cocky son of a bitch, but you don’t have any confidence at all.”  
  
“You’re trying to pick a fight aren’t you?” Juzo realized what Chisa had said a moment ago, about her being the double agent. The way she acted earlier was still bothering him, like she did not even care if she died. Did she not realize how important she was to the both of them?

Him and Munakata would never be happy if Chisa was not around. It was not about a love triangle or anything like that, a piece of themselves would be missing. Besides, _I’m the expendable one not her._ He looked at her slightly off angle stare. “Hey, Yukizome. How come you never talk about yourself? It’s like you’re always trying to fix me and Munakata’s problems for us.”  
  
“If you’re worried about that you boys should stop giving me trouble then.”  
  
“Tch. Why is everybody like this? You? Munakata? Everybody keeps acting different.” Juzo was smart enough to know something was off.

 If Chisa saw through people well, then Juzo  was aware of their feelings. He was often more sensitive to them than they themselves were. Even if she were to forget herself Juzo would still remember. That was what Chisa thought, anyway.  
  
“Well, I don’t give a shit if you’ve been lying to me the whole time. If you’re not a sweet girl or whatever. Not like I'm easy to get along with either. I can’t be like Munakata no matter how hard I try, I’m not on the side of hope, I’m on your side.” 

Chisa’s hands grabbed at her dress, and she tightened her hands around the fabric. Her face was unreasonable, but no matter what kind of lie she tried to tell with her face her eyes were so, so lonely.  
  
“I’ve wanted to cry on Kyosuke’s shoulder all this time.” Chisa suddenly raised her head and put on a smile. “Hey, if I were to fall to despair and Kyosuke had to destroy me, who’s side would you take?”  
  
“Don’t say that shit. Is that how you see us? At each other’s throats? We’re supposed to be friends-”  
  
It’s not like he was just afraid of liking a man. He did not want to lose his place between his two closest friends. He did not want his happiness to come at the expense of Yukizome’s. He just kept thinking over and over again, if Munakata would really be happiest if he was with him.  
  
“To me, you and Kyosuke have always been like that. It’s like he’s lying on the ground with a sword pointed up at your throat, and you’re holding onto his face with your whole hand as you stand over him. It’s always been like that, since you’re so different, that’s why you’re both afraid of losing each other.”  
  
“...Why would he?”  
Afraid of losing me? 

“It really is annoying listening to your whining. I’m not good enough for him. I want to be like you, Munakata. Gosh, you never shut up but…” Chisa glanced at Munakata on the bed. “You’re never going to be like him no matter how hard you try.”  
  
“I’m never gonna be good enough, huh? Funny, I told that to the spiky haired brat a while back and it sucks way worse hearing it then saying it.”  
  
Juzo thought about the short little brat who always ran his mouth, and the girl with silver hair he loved. He wondered if he was any different. Every single thing he did to stay close to his friends drove them away. He would rather hurt Munakata than look vulnerable in front of him. 

  
“You’re so stupid, Sakakura. If you can’t be like him then just be better than him.”  
  
Chisa had no idea why she was saying those words.  
The despair of watching her two closest friends destroy each other.  
The hope of watching Juzo saving Munakata by becoming his enemy when he failed as a lover.  
Which one would be more fun to watch?  
Hope, despair, hope, despair, hope, despair, hope, despair.  
The black and white possibilities flashed before her eyes again and again until she felt it.  
Nausea.  
_I’m so sick._ She thought, suppressing her urge to vomit with a smile. 

 

🧸

 

Pekoyama knew she was dreaming, because in hey school your  the young master looked at her in a way he never would if he were awake. 

She laid on the ground with her legs open, and knees apart. The young master stood there and simply watched.  
  
He stepped over her, and moved his feet apart so he had one foot by each of her hips. She tried to reach up and touch his face, but her whole arm moved and she brought a sword to the side of his neck. He casually stood there hands still in both of his pockets. He leaned over her, and she saw his tie fall down. When he removed his hand from one pocket he held a revolver which he cocked and pointed at her face.  
  
The young master pulled the trigger twice, and she heard. She heard because she could no longer see. He had shot out both of her eyes. There were only empty holes left, and she could only cry tears of scarlet.  
  
“You’re trembling.”  
  
He lifted her up, and suddenly wrapped his arms around her from behind. After gauging ut her eyes, he had wrapped bandages around them. He laid his hands over both of hers, and guided them. She felt his chin settled into the crook of her neck, as if he were laying a soft kiss there.  
  
Then, with his hands over hers, he drew out her sword from its sheath. That’s right. This is what she wanted. For the young master to hold her close and never let her go. She trembled in his hands, just as he said.  
  
Pekoyama suddenly woke up. Even though she thought she had been happy in the middle of her dream, all she felt after waking up was a certain emptiness. The image in front of her was too blurry, so she had to retrieve her glasses to see it.  
  
“Thank you for washing my clothes.”  
  
“It was my honor.”  
  
“And you even sewed them and fixed the tears in them. You’re amazing with threads!”  
  
“I am merely keeping my word as your servant.”  
  
“Thank you for following around Hijirihara-kun, and taking photographs and notes for me. This will be really important to add to my studies of serial various serial killers when I get back home.”  
  
Pekoyama sat up immediately, and noticed that Kirumi was waiting on Sonia hand and foot. _That girl must be used to getting spoiled._ “Um… Sonia-san, I believe Kirumi has better things to do.”  
  
“There’s no better use of my time then helping another person. How about you, PekoPeko what would you rather be doing?”  
  
Pekopeko could be read as ‘servile’. Pekoyama was being mocked by this untouchable woman again, and yet she could not raise her voice to defend herself. If Fuyuhiko ordered her to, she would kill the woman in front of her in an instant, and yet she suddenly felt so weak when she was alone.  
  
Pekoyama had followed Fuyuhiko to the top floor the staircase just before the roof, because she was too worried about him getting far away.  
  
As Sonia was going through her notes, burying herself  in her occult obsessions again now that Gundham was giving her the cold shoulder for now, she suddenly raised her head and looked up at Peko with an interest that made her spine shiver.   
  
“Oh, Peko you’re definitely not a virgin like me.”  
  
“My.. apologies?” Pekoyama’s instinct told her to run. It was not like she had any friends in that class anyway, just Hinata and Fuyuhiko her two boys.  
  
“No, I mean with killing. You’ve killed people before right. So you’d understand the mind of a killer way better than I would. Could you connect with a person like Hijirihara-kun?” Sonia rolled over on the floor in excitement, hugging the notebook that Kirumi gave her close to her chest. “I am most curious.” 

“That’s not something…”  
  
“Besides, Pekoyama wasn’t the one who killed those people. It was Kuzuryuu-kun that ordered her too,” said the spider to the fly.  
  
She was never allowed to have feelings, on whether she wanted to kill or not. She just knew she had never hesitated to kill, not even once. Now that she thought about it, she could have tried to run away, she could have taken the young master with her. She always imagined her entire life strings were tied to each of her limbs controlling how she moved, but those strings were never there in the first place. 

She did not think too often about the people she had killed. If she did she would have died by now. She told herself she was doing it all for the young master, but… Did her killing people make him happy? Did it just make her feel useful?  
  
She had been spoiled, unlike Ikusaba Mukuro. She was treated much kinder than that girl was. The idea of killing the young master’s enemies, and being useful to him even made her a little bit happy.  
  
When she lost the young master she realized what a horrible thing killing and dying was.  
She had always known but never let herself felt it.  
The loneliness in Hinata’s eyes when Komaeda died for one round in the game.  
That was what she did to people, over, and over, and over, and over.  
She cut people apart. She sliced through the strings connecting them together.  
She made them lose people, when she could not continue living if she lost Fuyuhiko.  
_And you thought it was alright for you to become happy?_

“These are just my thoughts on the matter but it must be easy if someone else is telling you to kill someone,” Kirumi said. She looked like she was playing a sweet melody to herself, plucking on the strings with each one of her delicate black fingers.  
  
Pekoyama had felt hesitation to kill someone for the first time. When she left the killing game, it became impossible to pick up her sword again and hold it normally without trembling. She just thought of the idea of losing Fuyuhiko, or Hinata again, and how that felt.  
  
Then that girl Nanami called herself a sword. She said they were the same.  
A moment ago she was fine with killing her if that meant Fuyuhiko could live, but all feelings of wanting to kill her had ended in that moment.     
  
It was pointless because Fuyuhiko and Hinata already decided she was the enemy. Her feelings, they only ever got in the way, they made things worse for the person she loved.  
  
She went to the rooftop to find him, but both Hinata and Fuyuhiko were passed out drunk on the ground. No, there was no way Hinata was actually drunk if he had Kamukura’s metabolism. She knew what somebody looked like when they were only pretending to sleep so they could quietly watch.  
  
She wanted to mischievously walk over and kick him. But, she was no child. She had never been one.  
  
The young master was being an idiot, and HInata was pretending to be one. It was a convincing act.  
  
She walked over to the young master’s side, and recalled the satisfying feeling of metal sliding across his neck. She bent down over him as she sat at his side, observing his sleeping face. Girlishly, she tucked one of the silver locks behind her ear. The sun was going to rise soon, and when they happened she would fall asleep again. She imagined what it would be like, to sleep peacefully next to him. To have him be the first thing she saw. 

Fuyuhiko suddenly stirred in his sleep. He brought up his face close to hers, and his breath was terrible. She watched his mouth moved, as he struggled to form words in the moment. She waited in anticipation for whatever he was going to say like it was the most important thing in the world to her, because it was.  
  
The words she wanted to hear.  
The words she wanted so much to say. 

Neither of them would ever speak it, because then the sword would slide through his neck, and his finger would slip and pull the trigger. Those words they were dying for would ruin everything.  
  
“Young master you drank too much.”  
  
“I didn’t break any laws.” 

 _That’s not the problem._  
  
“I can smell it on your breath.”  
  
“What about my lips?”  
  
She gave a slight gasp to indicate her confusion.  
  
Fuyuhiko giggled. “So pretty. Evanescent.”  
  
That was right. Evanescent present. In other words as if she had none. Almost like she was a ghost. If he leaned in to kiss her, would his face pass right through hers? Her body had no weight to it in that moment, as if only her existence was there.  
  
It’s shattering.  
Everything to pieces.  
A total catastrophe.  
She didn’t feel anything a moment ago, and now she could not keep those feelings down.  
  
Graceful.  
Evanescent.  
Fragile, like her thin lines could snap at a touch.  
She remembered an empty classroom.  
Her, always reading alone. She never expected anyone to call out to her. She never had any friends. Not a single one. It was her natural place to be. She built walls around herself, like it’s natural for her to be there, alone. But also, like it’s natural for her to not be there.  
  
Pretty, so pretty.

And she kept waiting for one boy to look her way. It was like waiting for flowers, and plants, and vines to spontaneously grow in the empty classroom they sat in, and slowly entwine aruond the two of them. 

  
So she could go back to the days it was them sitting on the porch, looking at the flowers Fuyuhiko’s mother tended to when she was not killing people. Her master heavy, strong, her chest, lighter than air. 

It was miserable, and lonely with him now, but the only time she had ever been truly happy was when she was with him. His face drew closer to hers. He never allowed her this close before. She thought so many times, what it would feel like, her head like a moon eclipsing his face.  
  
The way he looked at her like she was the only girl in the world, like when they were younger and only had each other. She knew she could survive in a world that was just him. The subtle movements his body made, the way his shoulders hitched, his thin waist she rested her hand upon, and every small sound he made became her whole world.  
  
“Young master, if we went to a normal school and a normal boy fell in love with me what would you do? Even if loving him would take me away from you would you let me?”  
  
“I would wish for your happiness.”  
  
“What if he broke my heart?”   
  
“He wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.”  
  
“I want you to want me…” His lip over hers, she bit down hard. Until she tasted his blood. Sweeter than anything she had ever tasted, and more bitter. As Fuyuhiko suddenly drew back confused. “But this… this is what you want? You don’t want to kiss me unless you're drunk, or be near me ever, but you want to get yourself killed for my sake?” 

She pushed him away. 

As he fell back, Fuyuhiko saw tears falling from her eyes as she closed them. 

The one person he never wanted to hurt.  
And he had hurt her in the worst, and most awful way.

 _So scared of losing her._ _  
_ _And she was never mine to begin with._


	33. Lingering Pain

**Day Six Part One** **  
  
**

When she was little she played house a lot. She had a pretend family, with a pretend pet, a pretend kitchen, and she would cook pretend food.   
  
One day she picked up a real knife by mistake. She had never seen a toy that sharp before and used it to play, and in the process cut herself deeply across the palm. She approached her mother with red soaked palms and held them up. 

Her mother did not cry and console her. She did not even lecture her. She simply left Mikan there alone as if she had already lost interest in that little girl’s pain.   
  
She loved treating her daughter like a grown-up instead of a child. Which was nice and all,b ut a parent who doesn’t treat her child like a child is warped to begin with. Kids are supposed to remain kids in their parents’ eyes, for good.   
  
When her mother looked at her what did she see? Perhaps just a smaller version of herself. But Mikan could not look at her and see a mother either. So much so that when she encountered a “mom” on TV or in a book, or in conceptual form, it wasn’t just jarring, it gave her the creeps.   
  
From a young age, Mikan knew the reason children cry, why they make so much of a fuss over the smallest little cuts, was because they wanted someone to share their pain with. She felt bad making anybody listen to her problems, so don’t go out of your way for her sake or anything, but if it’s really no bother, she would honestly be grateful.   
  
If just one person would listen to how she felt.   
Still, it’s probably pointless.   
Utterly pointless.

 _She_ would disagree. _She_ would say simply talking about your feelings or having someone listen to your problems to make you feel better is wrong. Even if you think you feel better, you probably only think so. 

 _“It’s the thinking so, the very illusion, that people desire deep down”_ that woman’s voice rang in her ears.   
  
Tsumiki still remembered, stabbing herself gently and holding back tears as she moved the needle up and down through her skin. When her mother refused to take her to the hospital, she had to sew up the hole left in her hand by herself. Through blurry eyes she watched, red butterflies leave the empty wound on her palm   
  
She played pretend nurse with herself as well. She understood why her mother left her alone. She was that woman’s daughter after all.

 _In her eyes I don’t feel pain._ _  
_ _Not even for a moment.  
_   
One person was enough. If just one person understood the pain she was in, then she would be saved. That was why she began to cry even louder even when it did not hurt. 

 

 **🦔** **  
  
**

The next morning all five of them agreed on a plan Medaka would draw away the attention of everyone else on her own, and Matsuda, Emukae, and Mikan would take Nanami in the opposite direction and hide.

Basically it went:   
 **Chisa and Juzo: Protect Munakata while he heals.**  
 **Kamukura and The rest of class 77-B: Kill Nanami before Tomorrow Ends  
** **Medaka: Protect Nanami  
** **Matsuda: Help Medaka  
** **Emukae: Didn't care about the results.  
** **Mikan:** **Too Spineless to make her own decisions.**  
  
“I am not babysitting the yandere twins!” Matsuda protested.   
  
“Oh, so you want to be the one to fight everybody else instead of forcing a super cute girl like me to do it?” Medaka smirked at him.   
  
“You still don’t know if you can trust me.”   
  
“I don’t know why I have to point out something so obvious to a supposed genius, but the only way you can know if people are trustworthy or not is by actually trying to trust them.” Medaka sighed, for a moment it looked like the super classy rich lady type girl was going to add a _no duh_  to that statement. Junko’s poison was spreading terrifyingly fast. “It can’t be that hard just make sure nobody dies for one day.”   
  
“Emukae is touching me!” Mikan cried out.   
  
“No, I’m making it a point not to get as close to you as physically possible without touching you. It’s a metaphor for brushing my lips against death.”   
  
“Emukae is metaphorically touching me!”   
  
Matsuda looked at the two girls behind him, and then back at Medaka with an equally empty stare. “You’re asking too much of me. I am just a boy. A genius like you couldn’t possibly understand how hard it is for me-” 

Medaka already picked up on the fact that Matsuda was watching and just shoved her hand over his mouth. “Yes, yes, you like to make funny little rants to yourself. We get it already. Find a new character trait.”

Before Medaka left, Matsuda stopped her one last time.  
He had been making excuses the entire time, he should have just told her what was on his mind. “Kurokami, wait-”   
  
“...?”   
  
“H-have a good day.”   


_Coward._ A hopeful lie would turn into despair once it was revealed. Matsuda knew this, and yet he still could not tell Medaka about her brother. Perhaps because he knew what it was like, when everything crashed down all at once.   
  
Matsuda turned to both girls at once. “Alright, I’m going to go change Nanami’s bandages. If you two kill each other while I’m gone, I am going to be so annoyed.”   
  
“Did you hear that, he said he would be annoyed. That means somebody would care if I died?” Mikan said excitedly turning to Emukae.   
  
“Mikan, you are somehow the easiest girl on earth, and the most difficult one at the exact same time.”   
  
“Even if it’s true it’s not nice to say things like that!” 

 

**🦔**

 

Eyesore.  
A thing that is very ugly.   
Her very presence disfigures the landscape.   
Mikan thought that, every time she looked at Emukae.   
  
It was painful just to look at her. That girl who had snaked her way around her, like barbed wire tied in knots around her heart. She had rotten eyes, a rotten disposition, and was a rotten child in general.   
  
What she really could not stand. 

What really bothered her was…how much pain Emukae was in. Ever since that girl had died without dying in front of her, Mikan paid more and more attention to that girl’s pain. 

  


Tsumiki Mikan.  
A dirty syringe left on the floor.   
A spilled bottle of pills left out in front of a child.   
A superficial bandage placed over a wound that sank deep inside of her.   
A scraped up knee.   
Bandages that traveled all the way up to her thighs instead of socks.   
  
These were the things that made Tsumiki herself. She found an identity in bandaging up her wounds all alone, away from others. The feelings packed inside of her heart, one by one, she killed them off.   
  
When Enoshima Junko placed a scalpel in her hand and told her to use it to kill for the first time it was far too easy. It was easy to use the medical tool for the opposite of its intended purpose. Her hands were already used to killing. Every day she killed herself.   
  
She swallowed all her spiteful emotions like needles, and felt them tear up her throat as they went down. Then she smiled to keep herself from vomiting them back up. Her smile became an act of violence towards herself.   
  
She did not want to look at Emukae, so she stared at the broken glass window nearby. As she turned her head towards the mirror, she saw a little girl dressed in pink. A bucket of dirty water had been thrown on her head in front of the class, and one of her shoes were ruined. When she was younger, her hair was shorter, she was quieter, and even though her face was covered in water already she did not cry.   
  
Perhaps fearing public vilification, Tsumiki Mikan never told anyone of what happened to her at home, or in the halls of school between classes. The people who picked on her in class got a little offended by what she did: how she just kept living as if nobody had done anything to her at all, as if what they had done to her didn’t humiliate her.   
  
That was why they always pushed further, they needed to humiliate her more, dominate her more, and that was when it started to escalate into violence. Even then, Mikan did not react at first. Her face a blank expression. The first time someone had hurt her seriously, she looked down at her own spilt blood and merely thought. _How stupid of me to get dirty like this, mom is going to lecture me._   
  
She remembered the flash of the boy’s knife, but the rest of the memory was quite difficult to remember even now. She went out into the rain, and simply let the blood wash off of her. Feeling cold, wet and sick, she simply sat there watching the blood wash off of her, and mix into a dark purple of bloodied water at her feet. Her own blood-tinted reflection was staring back at her. 

 

It was only then when the little girl saw her reflection that she realized she was crying.   
Perhaps if she cried more, somebody would help her.   
Perhaps if she screamed more, somebody would help her.   
Perhaps if she wounded herself, then somebody would see.   
  
It just kept getting worse, like an infection slowly progressing up her body. Tsumiki Mikan was convinced she had changed a lot from when she was a child.   
  
A girl with short hair in overalls, her face bruised, and her knees covered in scrapes.   
A girl dressed in a nurse's outfit, bandages mixed with knee-high black socks, and the black stilettos Junko gave her to wear.   
A girl standing there in an apron and a pink blouse pulled over her uniform.   
Her hair grew longer because she stopped bothering to cut it.   
Puberty hit, and her chest and hips widened, and everybody noticed, and she hated that they noticed.   
She grew increasingly neurotic, she needed more from everyone, she was never satisfied.   
  
But it was hard for her to believe anything had changed from back then. Even constantly licking others as she was begging them to lick her own wounds back in return, she felt like she was still hiding her pain.   
  
She lived her whole life like she felt no pain at all.   
She never showed her pain to others, not in any genuine way at least.   
  
She knew she spent her whole life swallowing bitter medicine. That was why, the girl who who wore her pain on her bloody sleeves, the girl who willingly swallowed poison irked her so much.   
When she was next to Emukae she thought about the way she lived.   
If making all the choices she did turned her into the opposite of Emukae, then life wasn’t so bad after all.   
  
Her childhood self grabbed at one leg, cowering in fear. Herself as Ultimate despair wrapped her arms around her waist, gave her a sensual squeeze and tried to pull her down. Mikan stood there indifferently as they both hung off of her. She continued to live, but had she let go of either of them?   
  
The same way scars could not be erased on her body, she could not change herself. She was only capable of fading slowly over time. 

 

It bothered her so much. Ever since she had seen Emukae die right in front of her, she had continually been bitten again, and again, but an unfamiliar pain.   
  
_That’s why I don’t like being left alone with this girl. She makes me think about myself too much._   
  
“You always think about yourself, Mikan. How is this any different?”   
  
“Hey, don’t read my mind like that!” Mikan’s body shivered. Just  being around that girl was too much, she was choked with the scent of dry blood. She really wanted to figure out this unfamiliar pain though.   
  
A pain she had never experienced before.   
Such a thing was hard to imagine for her.   
Call it her curiosity as a nurse.   
  
“Hmm, Kurokami-san’s like you, Mikan.”   
  
“H-huh?”   
  
“She’s stupid like you are.”   
  
“That’s unnecessary.” Mikan decided if she stood up for herself this girl might lose interest and finally leave her alone. She was going to do it. She grabbed on the front of her apron and pulled on it until it wrinkled. “Y-you’re the stupid one.”   
  
Emukae suddenly fell to her knees and broke down crying. Tears streamed down her face as she picked up one of her kitchen knives by the bladed end. “I’m s-sorry! I’m sorry for being born so awful! I’ll fix it! I’ll apologize so please!” 

 

“N-no, I”m the one whose sorry!” Mikan rushed to grab the knife out of Emukae’s hands. She felt like she was dealing with a particularly loud child.   
  
“No, you can’t be more sorry then I am. I’m the most sorry! Why are you stealing my apology time? This is my spotlight, get out of it! I’m having a heartfelt character moment! Apologize for interrupting!”   
  
“I-I’m sorry.”   
  
“Didn’t I just say you can’t say sorry? Do you even listen to me?” 

  
Mikan fell back, giving up completely on everything. Emukae wiped her tears right away. Mikan had no idea why she had been that worried in the first place. That girl in front of her was dead after all. She probably no longer felt pain anymore. “Ahahaha, I think I broke her!”   
  
“I’m ignoring you.”   
  
“Sure, go ahead. Let’s play a game and see how long you can last without attention.”   
  
Mikan puffed her cheeks out. “I lose already.”   
  
“That wasn’t a very fun game.” Emukae fell on the ground next to her. The two of them together looked like a set of discarded ragdolls. Not that they were together in any way. “I’m reading your mind again, why are you picturing me naked, Mikan?”   
  
“Th-that’s an old trick for social anxiety, you picture the person you’re talking too naked.”   
  
_You know I can’t actually read your mind right?_ Emukae wondered for a moment what she had tricked Mikan into admitting, and then she got bored enough to remember her original topic. “You and her both always look so hurt when other people are in pain. It’s so stupid.”   
  
“It’s not stupid, it’s called being a decent human being. Not that you would know!” 

  
“It’s not like you know about being decent either. Ahahaha, being lectured by Mikan is fun because she turns such a pretty pink.” None of her words were getting through to the girl as usual because Emukae seemed to just exist on the cusp of one whim to another.  “I think it’d be better if you didn’t give a shit about anybody. Yeah, you’d be happier that way.”   
  
Even if she could not be loved by a person, she still thought she could love someone.   
She always thought that. _Ugh, I wanted to figure out why Emukae was bothering me. Why do I always make things about myself? I’m so hopeless! Just the worst! No, no, focus Mikan, we don’t have time to spiral right now._ “Does it hurt?”   
  
“What a philosophical question you’ve asked me, without pain would be truly alive?”   
  
“Don’t deflect the question like Kumagawa would. Answer on a scale from one to ten, as your nurse I’m ordering you!”   
  
“Oh, I like the bossy nurse play. Hmm, hmm, well that would be eleven obviously.”   
  
Obviously.   
She had already died once. She died over and over again. When she died it burned her.   
  
“Then, you should just stop whatever it is you’re doing.” Mikan felt tears well up in the corners of her eyes. She was used to crying, but this was the first time she had cried for somebody else. Why… why did this one girl get her so worked up. “Quit pretending it doesn’t hurt, quit injuring yourself on purpose, and then putting on that stupid fake smile like it’s all okay when it so obviously isn’t.”   
  
“Should I cry like you do?”   
  
“I don’t care just do something! Anything but hurt yourself again and again.”   
  
Isn’t it enough?   
Aren’t you in enough pain already?   
She felt a familiar sadness. There was a boy who was in more pain than anyone else, but she let Kumagawa comfort her instead of treating his wounds. From the start she had been a failure of a nurse.   
  
“What’s the point of all this.”   
  
“Well,” Emukae began, “I’m like dead so there is no point-”   
  
“Then why are you dragging me around! Why did you make me get attached to you!?”   
  
The band-aid slapped over her heart was slowly peeling off. Mikan remembered no matter what she did she was bleeding internally. She was forever bleeding out from a wound that she could not treat.   
  
_This feeling. What was this feeling._ Something like pain but different. It almost felt good. Her body trembled, just by being near this person. A delight mixed with emptiness, and a craving for more. She stuffed her mouth with sweet things, like other people’s pity, and their attention, but she never tasted any of it.   
  
Yet, just looking at Emukae’s lips there was a strange taste on her tongue, bitter like blood, sweet like cherry medicine. This feeling like ice cold water, and boiling at the same time.

“Mikan, don’t look so happy it’s disgusting.” Emukae stuck her tongue out.  
  
Mikan shivered, like a naked girl dumped in the snow. “Y-you, you what?”   
  
Emukae shrugged. “Fine, I’ll admit to it. I’m just using you. But that’s what you want isn’t it?” 

 

**🦔**

_I want to become Kumagawa._

That girl said, a smile permanently fixed on her face. 

_If I can’t have senpai back then I’ll just become him._

『 _You would be happier if you had never met me._ 』   
  
Those were the last words Kumagawa said to her corpse. She wanted to scream out that he was wrong. Everyone else in his life told him that, and Kumagawa himself accepted it, but she never once thought that way. A life full of pain was worth living if he was in it. 

That was what she wanted to say but she never got the chance. When she opened her eyes again she was standing in the middle of a crossroads. She had been rewound in causality to the first moment that she met Kumagawa.   
  
At that time she only glimpsed him from afar. On that day, he turned his head back and smiled at her when he noticed they were walking to the same school. It was the first time anybody had looked at her and smiled.   
  
She decided on that day to kill herself. Just one person smiled at her, that was enough. That same day the boy who had turned his head back and noticed her, remembered her enough to follow her up to the rooftop when she made an excuse to leave class early.   
  
That same boy turned his back on her now. She felt agony, like screws being driven into her brain as her memories were wrenched away from her. She ran out into the road and chased after that familiar black back.   
  
“Kumagawa-kun, don’t…!” 

She did not need a happy life. She did not care if her story ended in tragedy. All she needed was a story with him in it. As she recklessly ran after him, she heard the shrieking of tires. 

 _Don’t leave me behind._   
  
She heard a wet noise.   
It was a person.   
In the moment a person that that person fell, she heard a sickening sound. The wet, raw sound you associate with the kind of things that are the farthest away from happiness. The kind of sound she was far too used to hearing.   
  
She drew closer to the point of impact, and was able to scrutinize what had happened more clearly. A car had hit that person, and the tires dragged her neck across the tar of the road while the driver attempted to break pulling it away from her body. All that was left, all that her mind could take in, was a scarlet trail seeping slowly across black from where her neck had been, her frail, bone-like limbs, and long hair the color of a long faded scar.   
  
And that dead face.   
Her own dead face. It stuck in her mind, like a flower perfectly preserved between the pages of a book that had closed on her life. Her own corpse, with her neck twisted, looked like a broken lily.   
  
It was the only time the girl could have ever been a flower, after she was already trampled on. The corpse like a single, solitary flower, red and artificial, her limbs twisted to look like flower petals.   
  
She made such a beautiful corpse. Even thinking of it now, Emukae was consumed by such a thirst, a thirst that burned up her own throat and made her want to lick up her own blood, to turn that feeling into screaming ecstasy inside of her.   
  
The figure in all black she had chased after was not Kumagawa to begin with. She only learned this after her death. He was a man named Kaiki, who looked like the living embodiment of bad luck.

Just as she had died, he had turned his head around and watched her blood splatter everywhere in front of him. Even his pitch black, a black that did not stain with any other colors, was overwhelmed by the bold crimson of her blood. 

When she died with Kumagawa’s name on her lips, that old man brought her back. She had no idea why, nor did she particularly care anymore. In fat for the first few weeks she really did act like a zombie, but that was probably due to psycholical trauma and not some curse of the undead. Apparently, all she did was sit in the corner of the room and mumble Kumagawa-san over and over again.  
  
There was nothing left without him, just lingering pain.   
  
In the present moment, Emukae was smiling with divine ectsasy.   
  
“I know he’s a useless con-artist and he’s the person I hate the most,” Emukae explained waving her hands in the air desperately. “It’s just that… there are people he saved exactly because he was a person like that.”   
  
Mikan had no idea what to say to an expression like that.   
  
“You were saved by Junko too. Even if she went on to hurt you worse, even if she only abused you because of that, she was still exactly the kind of person that could save you.”   
  
Junko saved her.   
She saved her, and then she used her.   
No, maybe she had saved her by using her. Back then Mikan did not care at all if she was loved or not, she had already fallen into despair, she just wanted the idea that someone else understood her pain. Even if love was a lie she could still be satisfied with it, she thought.   
  
Ah. That was it.   
The definition of love that always eluded her. Understanding someone else’s pain.   
That was all she wanted this entire time, the crying girl with an open wound on her hand.   
If only somebody would take that bloody hand.

“You know, I’ve changed since you first met me. Even if this isn’t true happiness, I can laugh, cry, and even get angry now. The old me wouldn’t even be able to imagine those feelings.” Mikan said as she took a bold step forward. She looked like she was dancing in a way as she spun around on her heels. Her bandaged hand reached into her pink blouse, as if to feel her own chest. “But, I think you’ve changed too. That’s why you’re the one being stupid. You can’t become Kumagawa if you keep changing like this.”   
  
Emukae said nothing. “My mother used me. Junko used me. Kumagawa used me. In the end, you’re just using me too, but that’s fine.” Mikan reached forward and grabbed Emukae with her unbandaged hand pulling her closer. “Please keep using me for your own happiness. I want to use you for my happiness too. It’s too early for you to die and leave things unfinished, don’t you think?” 

 

She did not want it to end.  
This feeling that warmed her skin, and crawled up on her like a rash.   
A feeling of being around Emukae.   
Everything that came out of her mouth was a lie, but there was a bit of truth to them too. That was why Mikan wanted to believe in her.   
  
Emukae of course, did not respond to her emotions at all. That girl’s smile was a wall she hid behind. The only show of emotion was the closing of her eyes for a moment. “Hmm, sure, fine. Do whatever you want, MIkan. I was just kidding around about owning you and you being my love slave anyway.”   
  
“When did you mention that last part?”   
  
“I was thinking about it.”   
  
“C-censor your own thoughts! I’m a pure girl at heart you know!” 

  
“You know…” Emukae repeated. “Isn’t this just picking another person to let use you?”   
  
“Yep. But, I was a little bit happy being around you and I might lose that happiness if you go off recklessly and die. If you don’t want to continue then.”   
  
Tsumiki Mikan drew a scalpel from within her blouse and leveled it at Emukae’s neck. “Shall we die together right here? Game over?” 

 

 **🦔** **  
** **  
** It hurts.   
It hurts. 

She could never say those words.  
She hated that she had to pretend to care for the wounds of other people. She hated being alone, bandaging up her own wounds. 

 

In Hope’s Peak she made her first friends, and the words of those girls completely unaware of her pain slowly wore her away. Not a single person could see that even when Mikan stood up, there was a small girl crying, hiding away in her shadow.   
  
That was how she decided to live. That was the lie she decided to tell to make up herself. She wanted to pretend to care more about the pain of other people than her own pain, even if being used like this wore her down slowly it made her feel a little better than the people who hurt her.   
  
That was why she hated that girl in front of her who had her pain written all over her body. 

 _It hurts._   
How could I ever say that?   
  
She knew how transparent, how thin skinned she was. Playing the victim was an act she did so poorly that not even people like Chiaki bought it anymore. Yet, she felt especially naked in Emukae’s eyes.   
  
She would not forgive.   
She would not forgive that girl for making her feel this way. 

 

Even then, even when Mikan pointed an edge at her neck Emukae refused to respond to Mikan’s feelings in any way. Mikan felt completely shut out, and oddly lonely. No matter what she did, this girl would never receive her feelings.   
  
“I see. Bye, bye. It was fun.”   
  
Mikan dashed forward. Gracefully, elegantly, as her apron spun with her it looked almost like a beautiful ballroom dress that she would never wear. Then their bodies collided and Mikan was on top of Emukae.   
  
“I can touch you but you can’t touch me.”   
  
A smile spread on Mikan’s lips. Then her entire face broke out into laughter, as she had stabbed ot Emukae but rather the spot next to her. It was the first time, Emukae had ever seen Mikan laugh so much, so spontaneously.   
  
“Eehehehe! Were you scared?”   


_Ah. Don’t laugh like that. I might just fall for you._   
  
Mikan leaned forward over her further and brought the scalpel to her tongue, and dragged it along the surface, until she nicked her lips just a little bit. Red fell from above, and blotted out the vision in one of Emukae’s eyes.   
  
“Did you really think I’d kill you? Of course not…”   
  
Emukae realized in that moment, even if she was just joking around. Even if it was all lies to her, she might have pushed Mikan a little bit too far.   
  
“JUst now, you didn’t want to die, am I right?”   
  
Even though she was already dead. The thought of Mikan killing her was not something that Emukae could smile at. It was not funny. She did not laugh one bit. Her smile faded from her face. “Mocking me, you’re so meeaaaaaaan. I always told you, you just want to bully others-”   
  
Mikan’s eyes suddenly widened, and she cut Emukae off with a confidence Emukae did not even know she had. “I’m not mocking you. I just thought of something that’ll feel good for the both of us.”   


Emukae’s throat hitched. She would not bleed if she was stabbed, but there was one surefire and easy way to kill her especially if she was pinned like this. All Mikan needed to do was lay her hands over Emukae’s.   
  
“Before you become Kumagawa, I’ll kill you so you can die as yourself.” It was the same words Emukae had said earlier, repeated back again. This really was like having a conversation with a mirror. They were both idiots. There was nothing to be gained by kissing a mirror, you would just leave your lipstick marks on the glass. “What do you think? Then, we have a reason to keep working together. I’m your enemy who wants to stop you from getting what you desire the most, so you should always keep me close by your side. Please? Mukae?”   
  
Mikan finally figured it out.   
What Emukae made her feel.

Emukae’s eyes showed a little life. It was odd, for a dead girl who was stitched back together.   
  
“This is the first time I’ve ever asked somebody for help, soooo…”   
  
“It’s my loss.” Emukae said, like a good minus. There was no way she could win against someone with talent in the end after all. She reached forward, putting her hand on the scalpel that Mikan was holding onto, and dissolved it into nothing before MIkan could cut herself again.   
  
Pink.   
So much pink.   
  
Mikan touched the liquid falling from her lips, and streaked it onto Emukae’s face. The pink color spread, lazily it dripped down from the other girls lips, painting them, coloring them, bringing a little life back.   
  
As if in a dream.   
Mikan giggled happily. 

“Our first kiss.” 

_This is the first lipstick I’ve ever had._  Emukae thought. 

She did not see the point in makeup before this.  
It was pointless covering up the ugly.   
But maybe if Mikan liked it, it wasn’t so bad.   
  
At that moment as she was enticed to join Mikan’s dreaming by her short bursts of giggling, Emukae looked behind the girl and realized something.   
  
“Hmm, how come Matsuda-kun hasn’t come out to yell at us for trying to kill each other yet.”   
  
Mikan did not even look back her eyes still fixed on Emukae. “He probably went to follow Medaka-chan so she would not try to handle the burden of protecting Nanami alone.”   
  
“Oh, he’s trying to save another girl, huh? Because that’s worked so well for him in the past.”   



	34. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Roses bloom in four seasons" is a reference to Osamu Dazai's the Setting Sun

Let me tell you a story about love:    
People fall in love.    
A love story isn’t about love, it’s about people in love. 

 

🦔   
  
Matsuda Yasuke sneezed. 

 

“Somebody insulted me behind my back. Good. I was getting worried people were starting to like me.”    
  
“Don’t touch me anymore.” Nanami said, wrenching her leg away from him. Her other leg, the one that was simply dislocated had already healed but the broken bone still needed to remain set.    
  
“Huh?”   
  
“I’m sick enough as it is.” 

  
In her mind, Nanami lived in a small neat white box, with four white walls. It was her one and only holy space. There she always had air purifiers running, and there was a faint smell of antiseptic. The only people who entered wore disposable latex gloves, surgical masks, and wiped themselves down with wet tissues. Most of her clothes and furniture were white or close to it, and her parents constantly restocked her with new clothes.    
  
Even though she never left her room, she washed her hands over and over again until they were raw. She neatly cut her hails. She let her hair grow long so she would not have to feel other people touching her hair to cut it. (She did not know how to cut it herself). She put a flower in it, because the fresh smell made her think she was clean.    
  
Some might call her a clean freak but Nanami regarded herself as a plain old regular freak.  “Uncleanliness” and “Cleanliness” are just images made up by people after all with no set definitions. There are people who call themselves clean freaks in spite of having messy rooms.    
  
Nanami’s image of uncleanliness was “other people.” Green. Green. Green. They were green all over. Malignant bacteria. Other people petri dishes that generated bacteria. Touch her fingers. Hold her hand. The infection spreads. She could never hold hands with the person she loved, so she was almost happy that no one loved her anyway.    
  
Despite being sicker than anyone else, despite being used to it, she was still terrified of sickness. Dealing with other people was nothing but a sickness to her.    
  


Nanami was sure the sentiment was mutual. There was nothing to be gained from being friends with a girl like her, who could not remember people’s names, could not put on an insincere smile, could not make eye contact, could not do anything a normal person was capable of doing and yet put up a thousand obstacles and difficulties for anyone attempting to get close to her. 

  
For Nanami other people were just a source of stress, and Nanami herself was just a burden on her family for being born.  _ It’s a mutual hatred how romantic,  _ Nanami thought with a smile.

  
If there was one thing she hated more than people, it was doctors. The young man in front of her was a doctor, and he was painfully human so really he was the type of person she hated the most.    
  
“Alright, I won’t touch you without permission anymore,” Matsuda said as he removed his hands. 

  
“Ah, ha, ha- hack! It’s always good when others know their place,” she said, and she laughed, as if trying to echo carefree laughter, trying to retrace an innocent smile, but no matter how hard she tried her expression was horribly sick and warped. 

 

“Props laughing like an arrogant, stuck up bitch, but honestly I know someone who’s so talented at being a bitch that no matter how much you try to pretend to be one you’ll never match up to them. All of your efforts are worthless in the face of that talent.”    
  
“Are you talking about Enoshima Junko, or Kumagawa Misogi?” When Matsuda did not answer, she simply continued speaking. Nanami considered all conversations to be talking to herself anyway, she just occasionally had guest stars on the Nanami Talk Show. “I really wanted to meet Kumagawa.”   
  
“Why?”    
  
“So I could tell him that I’m suffering worse than he is.”   
  
“It’s not a competition!” 

 

“Yes it is and I’m winning. When other people are suffering it just makes me feel less special you know?”    
  
“So basically you’re just admitting you hate other people’s feelings?”    
  
“Other people besides me have feelings? That’s rude of them to inconvenience me like that.” Her eyes flickered away and back to him as if turning it over. “I’m not sure I get the concept, can you explain to me what feelings are? No wait, that might be too much for me. Can you explain to me what other people are?” 

“Well, I’m standing right here in front of you.”    
  
“I know, it’s very unimpressive. And I don’t know why.” Nanami’s face, a pale mask as always, started to crack. “Why are you still here with me?”    
  
If he were to move she could predict everyone of his actions, and yet she had no idea why he was standing next to her. She knew she was nothing pleasant, a girl capable of becoming a flower, because at least they were soft on the eyes, when you breathed them in flowers bloomed inside of you, but she could never add anything pleasant to the scenery like a flower could.    
  
She loved flowers because she was nothing like them. She loved them because there was no garden of flowers inside of her. She liked roses best, but they bloom in all four seasons. People who like roses best have to die four times over again.    
  
She died four times. She was miserable four times over. She was hated four times as much. Life to her was something that rotted away, like a leaf that rotted without falling, she had four times as many reasons to die as everyone else and yet she still would not die.   
  
Even though she was not alive in the first place.   
Not even half alive.   
More like a quarter.    
  
“I’m your doctor,” Matsuda said the words she hated the most. 

  
“I’m going to kill you.”   
  
“That’s fair.”    
  
“No, you would enjoy it too much. I dislike other people’s happiness. Carry me instead.”    
  
Matsuda offered his back to her, and she climbed up making sure to touch no part of his skin. She loathed being so close to another person, but she only had one leg for now. Nanami thought about this several times, even if she were a normal person she would have been this way. She would not want to embrace others, she would not want to be friendly with them, she would not want to spend time around people who were sick for her own sake, she was simply born to be an inconvenience, she was not fit to be human at all.    
  
Nanami already knew where they were heading, it was predictable. The hero tries to save the girl, how much had she read that story before all alone in her little room. She already knew Yasuke’s story, sometimes she closed her eyes and pretended that a childhood friend like that existed for her, but that was just a fantasy, meaningless infatuation.    
  


“You still haven’t answered my question-”  
  
The two of them already were walking towards Medaka. “You want to die right, if I’m a doctor I can’t let that happen right in front of me.”   
  
“But I’m a bad person you know, a rotten child..”  
  
“Oh man, you’re right. Suddenly right now I spontaneously decided to give a shit about morality. Thanks, you’ve changed my entire life.”   
  
Matsuda remembered.  
A boy in snow white, lips as red as blood.   
  
“I get you that you hate doctors, but there was this kid who was a pain in the ass like you. He tortured the psychologist who was helping him out of the good of her heart, and then he got dumped on me.” Matsuda could see his breath in the cold.   
  
A flash of frost in the air that quickly faded away. A faint heartbeat pressed across his back.  
White. White. White.   
A white city.   
All white things belonged to him, reminded Yasuke of him.   
  
“But, it wasn’t that way at all. Yeah, maybe he didn’t want to be helped, maybe he didn’t want to be fixed, but why was the patient expected to be the better person? Why did Gekkougahara get mad at him when a broken person acted broken? He put up all those walls because he just wanted one person to see through him, he wanted one person to sympathize with him.” 

 

White like a sheet.   
Transparent like a ghost. 

Beautiful skin, that he could never touch for fear of leaving a mark on.    
A cherry blossom clinging to the branch, until all of its colors faded to white.    
  
“Let me guess, you were that person.”   
  
“No, I wasn’t. I didn’t do a damn thing for him in the end. Just slapped a bandaid on him and treated him like he wasn’t my priority.” 

  
Matsuda Yasuke still remembered the blood drenched snow on that day. The beautiful Komaeda he knew, somehow seemed hideous contaminated with blood. It had soaked through him, and dyed him a completely different color, he was stained underneath his skin.    
  
Komaeda Nagito did not kill people. He could justify it to himself easily if people died, but he was simply too sensitive. He did not want to be the reason other people died. Every time he tried to kill someone with his own hands, he expected to fail, he prayed his luck would sabotage him. Komaeda might manipulate somebody else to their own death, but he could never violently kill them with his own hands.    
  
He simply loved other people too much. He loved other people, while hating himself. 

 

That was why what he saw in front of him simply looked wrong. It was like throwing a bucket of red paint on a painting that was already finished, a fresh coat of blood everywhere. Komaeda standing there, his fingers twisted and gnarled branches of a dead tree. They were shapes that no longer resembled human hands.    
  


On the ground there was a girl with blue hair, and blue eyes. The scarf that she had always wore around her neck was wrapped tightly around her, warming her cold body even in death. 

 

Komaeda was covered in blood but not a single speck of blood was on the body, because it was not Gekkougahara’s blood, but his own. Komaeda stood in front of the moon, but  Matsuda was looking at the boy’s shaking hands.    
  
Flowers could bloom in winter after all, he thought. You just needed to water them in blood. Komaeda looked, empty of all things, he had thrown away sadness, and most of all thrown away his love for other people, but throwing it all away he was still left with his hands.    
  
That was why all he could do was stare at shaking hands. The hands he wanted to be tender, and merciful. Hands weren’t anything in the end, just hands, just skin and bone and in the freezing weather the blood vessels in his fingers might die, and gangrene might set in, necessitating that Matsuda would have to cut those fingers off to treat him but that was what Komaeda wanted.    
  
Komaeda didn’t want anything, and didn’t do anything, and couldn’t do it anyway. He tried to understand himself, or maybe someone else, even just a little bit, but it never made sense, anything.    
  
And he killed someone.    
He lived his life forcing himself to swallow pills, and digging graves in the dirt at his feet, and he was so, so tired of death and he knew how terrifying death was more than anyone else because his whole life he ran away from it. And he knew how precious living was because he had never lived not even once.    
And he killed someone. 

  
“Do you know how many members of my class Gekkougahara could have saved? How much she needed their help? Her talent to listen to them? Hope doesn’t need to be something grand, it can be someone who listens and I smothered that small hope with my own hands.”   
  
“No you didn’t.” Matsuda said, walking up to her body still preserved by the snow. “She committed suicide.” 

  
“Matsuda-kun-”   
  
“Is a brain dead moron like you presuming to lecture me about medical advice? Even a drunk first year medical student could tell the difference between rope burns from strangulation, and a hanging. No go on lecture me like you usually do. Tell me how you know better, because even though you constantly fuck up and make things worse for everybody else, some part of you thinks you know better. You’re so stupid you can’t tell a fork from a spoon anymore but please, tell a doctor how to perform an autopsy. I so love your backseat driving and the ten car pile ups it always causes!”    
  
Matsuda felt like if he had said something kind and comforting to Komaeda in that moment it would be the worst thing he ever did. Komaeda was the kind of person who could be killed so easily with that kindness. 

  
“Killing your own therapist, isn't that the literal definition of crazy?” Nanami interrupted Matsuda’s story.    
  
“I can’t believe you’re using humor to cope at a time like this. You’re awful. Just the worst.”    
  
“You’re just mad because I thought of that line before you.”    
  
“Only a little bit!” Matsuda felt the girl who trembled just like Komaeda did shiver against his back, and felt so cold that goosebumps spread on his skin. “Komaeda would never kill anybody, except for her and maybe Zenkichi. They have one thing in common, they try to help others, they force it on them.”    
  
Matsuda looked up at the night sky without the moon, and a world without that boy in it seemed equally empty to him. “When somebody tries to help you without understanding you, it just becomes an act of violence.”    
  
“But I think Komaeda-san is just like you. A fool who doesn’t want to be understood.”    
  
“Maybe but… if you share your life with someone, and they use those intimate details against you, and they say they’re doing it in your best interest. Well to put it in terms of being the worst, that’s basically Junko level-shit right there. And the goal in life should be the opposite of Junko, to run away from her as far as possible.”    
  
“You run away from the people you love? That sounds like a good strategy.”    
  
“Hey, stop riffing off what I say. I’m trying to explain something.”    
  
“But I’m having fun.”    
  
“Anyway, it’s just looking down on them. Medaka-chan does that too and I…”    
  
Yasuke remembered the naked boy underneath his scalpel. The way he rested a hand covered in sterilized glove over the boy’s chest, wishing he could touch skin to skin.    
  
“You just stop sympathizing them. You forget that a person is in pain in front of you. You don’t give a shit about what they want, you think everything you’ll do is automatically better for them. I thought… I thought I was better than him. That he deserved it. He was just some kid who had a family, and had friends, and was lazy and wanted to be special anyway despite having everything already…”    
  
He remembered sliding that scalpel down until the boy’s chest was open. Then reaching forward, and grabbing that heart. He wanted to be the one to open and close his hand and control the circulation of blood through the body, that kind of absolute possession.    
  
“I thought he deserved it. Whatever I did to him, it was his fault.” 

  
“You really are a shitty doctor.”    
  
She was a weed.   
Rotten at the roots.    
If her root rot spread she would infect the whole garden.    
  
“I know.” 

 

She hated weeds.    
She hated herself.   
A girl who could only be a burden to others.   
A plant who stole sunlight, and nutrients from others who needed it more.   
An unwanted presence in the garden.    
A seed that should have never taken root.    
A girl living on borrowed time, waiting to be plucked.    
  
“And you think you’re going to convince me to live?” 

  
“Do what you want. You can make your little plan and try to piss Medaka off enough until she tries to kill you but it won’t work. She’ll still want to help you in the end. She’ll force her love on you.”    
  
Matsuda said, as if he was describing some horrible, violent, thing.    
  
“But, I’ll stay by your side and sympathize with you until the last day.”    
  
“Ewe.”   
  
“Yeah, I know it’s disgusting.” 

 

🦔

 

Matsuda defines himself by the people he loves.   
Losing them is like losing parts of himself, it’s the same as having limbs torn off of him at the joint and then slowly bleeding out because his heart continued to beat even after they were gone.    
  
Takumi Hijirihara defined himself entirely by another person too, but it was the other despair sister. He was frozen in a single moment in time, his whole self was the result of another person’s actions.    
  
Ikusaba Mukuro killed his entire middle school class while he watched, and left him alive. Takumi was sure he was still inside that locker somewhere. His body wandered out and started to walk around lost and away from him but all the important parts, the  _ essence  _ had been shoved in that locker.    
  
Before he met her he had absolutely nothing to define himself by. He saw other people as a bother. When he fundamentally could not get along with them, it made dealing with them even harder. When they tried to look him in the eye he looked away. He forgot the names and faces of others easily. When people talked to him he had no idea what to say, and gave the distinct impression he did not want to talk to them.    
  
He could not even fake a smile. He was unaware of who he was, or the other people around him, and he felt nothing but uneasiness, like a constant queasy and sick feeling in his stomach. He was fundamentally unhappy with who he was. He felt less and less like a person and more than a colony of bugs crawling around in human skin.    
  
Takumi also knew he could barely handle this thing called ‘being alive” and that being close to him just meant taking on a thousand unnecessary burdens. There were plenty of other people to be friends with who did not have the added difficulties. The only friend he ever made was the responsible type, who liked taking care of others.    
  
His mother once put it simply.  **You make it so people can’t relax.** He did not think she was being mean, just honest.  **Nobody really likes you, and they can’t either. You don’t let them.**

 

Takumi was sure he had that effect on people, he could never relax and be his true self around others and so flitted about like a vague and ill-defined ghost, a person entirely lacking in everything in completely noticeable ways. He could never relax around other people, never be comforted by them, so he never let them relax, never let them have comfort.    
  
He did not like who he was, so he was almost happy to become a killer. It gave him something to define himself by. He was happy to meet Mukuro, it was like a first meeting between fated lovers, or like a meet cute but more murdery.    
  
That was why he did not understand.    
That girl was always crying alone. 

  
Takumi realized he had been a crybaby when he was younger, but he never cried because he felt sad. He only cried because he was sensitive to pain. He disliked it. A strange trait for a murderer to have. 

 

When he saw her crying, he felt something. A lukewarm feeling that he disliked. He had never once cared about someone else’s feelings before this point, but Mukuro was the person who made him lunch every day, and cleaned his room, and always took care of others but had nobody to take care of her.    
  
It was strange to him, for someone so caring and nurturing to also be a heartless killer. It almost made him feel bad for not having a heart.    
  
“Ikusaba-senpai.”   
  
Mukuro when he noticed he had been watching immediately wiped her eyes. He had no idea why she would not cry in front of her.    
  
“Mm?”    
  
“What do you do when another person feels sad?”    
  
“Did I upset you somehow? I’m sorry. I’ll apologize over and over again, I’ll get on my knees-”   
  
“Yeah. I’m sad. I don’t like feeling this way, it’s really inconvenient. All feelings that don’t directly relate to murder are just obnoctious.”    
  
“You could tell me-”   
  
“I don’t want to tell you!” He snapped at her suddenly.    
  
  


Mukuro handled it all with a cool face as usual. She struggled to try to convey some kind of emotion on that cool as death face. It was not that she felt nothing like him, she was just incapable of expressing that, he had figured it out a long time ago. She grabbed the bento she had prepared for him this morning, and opened it in front of him.    
  
“Then, just talk about whatever you want.”    
  
“Talking about the things I like will just annoy you. For some reason, people don’t like it when you start describing the grisly details of a murder while they’re eating. They’ve explained it to me but I still don’t really understand-”   
  
“No, it’s fine. If you like it, how can it be annoying? I just want to hear you talk. I’m no good at talking anyway, so it’s better if I stayed quiet.”    
  
Under a blue sky with his upperclassmen, Takumi just talked about whatever he wanted. No matter what he said, Mukuro just kept smiling at him. It was the first time he said what was truly on his mind, and someone listened to him.    
  
He was slow to understand other people. That was why he did not realize until just now. Mukuro’s tears were from the overwhelming guilt she felt for killing his class. Yet, she never put her feelings above his own    
  
He thought she was stupid. He did not even want feelings to begin with. When she was around him, she did not save him, she just treated him like a friend. She was not spending time with him out of atonement, simply because she liked him. It was like she knew she would never be forgiven, so she did what she could, she just tried to be better around him.    
  
That kind of thing really pissed him off, because he slowly started to feel like a person again.   
He wanted to be a killer. A person couldn’t kill another person. Useless.    
  
The way Mukuro treated him, it reminded him of Kei Munakata right now. The two of them were sitting in a pitch black offertory box for the shrine.    
  
“It’s okay, there’s no reason to be afraid of the dark. The dark is comforting, it hides all the things you’re insecure about. Now nobody will know how droopy my eyelids are. I mean you are crammed in here with another killer, but what’s more friendly, warm and inviting then someone who wants to murder you?”    
  
Hijirihara ranted to break the uncomfortable silence as always. Takumi and Munakata working together had made zero progress in their escape due to the fact that Takumi got distracted, or had to be difficult every five minutes. Yet, all that time Kei never once got angry with him.   
  
  


Even right now Kei had offered to sit in the offertory box with him so he would not be alone. Even though Kei was claustrophobic, afraid of the dark, and it was obvious how much it bothered him.    
  
“You don’t like your droopy eyes?”   
  
“When people see them they assume I’m a lazy drop out.”   
  
“You dropped out of middle school to become a killer. You told me your favorite hobby besides murder was taking naps.”    
  
“Well yes, it’s completely true that I am a lazy drop out but it’s the assumption that bothers me. I hate when people think they know me just from a look.” He hated being known in general. “What did I ever do to deserve to get judged like that?”    
  
“You did kill people.”   
  
“Well, yeah but that’s…” Takumi did not look remorseful at killing people, just slightly embarrassed, like Kei had brought something awkward up. “A court of law should judge that. But I don’t want a public trial, too many people staring at me looking at me like I’m a killer.”    
  
“But you are a killer.”   
  
“Yeah, but I don’t want them to look at me. Look, I don’t understand people at all, and I even try to kill them, but somehow even if they’re a complete stranger I care about what they think. How are you not getting this, it makes perfect sense to me?”    
  
“Ah, I’m just bad with people.”    
  
“Terrible. Just the worst. You’re no fun to talk to either. You really need to improve your social skills if you want to survive out there in the real world. Whoever decided to be your friend must be a very charitable person for putting up with you.”   
  
“Yeah… he’s nice,” Munakata muttered, silently like a prayer.    
  
Takumi was sure he had done something annoying by now, but Kei did not look annoyed. How strange.    
  
“It’s not the darkness that really bothers me, it’s the mould,” Munakata said.    
  
“Awe, but the mould is the best part. They’re like your little friends, and they only have single cells so they can’t judge you.”

Well, it was probably impossible not to get close when bonding in an offertory box like this. Takumi opened up the box once he heard his stomach rumble.    
  
Kei dropped a plastic konbini store bag in front of his face. Takumi fishing the food out began to ramble. “Do you think if I forget to eat I’ll be committing an act of murder against myself? Starving to death might be a slow and passionate kind of murder… oh, wait are you taking care of me like this because you like me? I may have a boyfriend but I’m not gay.”   
  
“I think having a boyfriend makes you gay.”   
  
“Oh, you’re right. Why didn’t I think of it that way? Everything ends up backwards when it gets into my head. Like for instance, I say the words  _ I want to kill you  _ instead of  _ I love you. _ ”   
  
“Then you should just do a headstand.”    
  
Takumi ate with his bare hands because he did not know how to use chopsticks. He expected someone as uptight as Munakata to lecture him, but the other boy just silently watched him. In his head Takumi was going over and over again  _ don’t make it awkward, don’t make it awkward, don’t make it awkward.  _   
  
“I’m really looking forward to killing Kurokami-senpai.”    
  
That was the reason Munakata was so silent after all. 

  
Hinata had contacted them earlier and persuaded them to work as a part of his plan to kill Nanami. To clarify the factions were this.    
  


**Emukae:** Doesn’t care what happens    
**Mikan:** Doesn’t want to make a decision on her own so just follows along.    
**Juzo + Chisa:** Ignoring the current situation to take care of Munakata   
**Kamukura + Class 77-B:** Decided to kill Nanami   
**Medaka:** Decided to protect Nanami by acting as decoy and fighting everyone.    
**Takumi:** Just wants to kill someone.    
**Kei:** Wants to babysit Takumi.    
  
“Whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper.”    
  
“What are you doing?” Kei asked.    
  
“I’m discussing the plan.”   
  
“No, you’re just repeating the word whisper out loud.”    
  
“That’s so the audience won’t hear it so, sssssh!” Takumi said, sending spittle into Kei’s face. “We won’t succeed at all, but don’t you think if Medaka copies our killing techniques then she’ll become the perfect killer.”    
  
“Mm…”   
  
“Did I say something awkward again? You can just tell me. I might cry or try to kill you or do both at the same time, but I know I’m an annoying person so it won’t bother me that much.” Takumi said in one breath, which was impressive. “Have you ever read Urasawa’s monster?”    
  
“No, I actually don’t like to read stories where people die. I like romantic comedies.”   
  
“Well I’m just going to tell you how it ends. They don’t decide, if he’s a monster or not. I was kind of sad, because I’ve always wanted to find that, the perfect killer.”    
  
“The perfect killer?”    
  
“A killer who’s not a person, just a killer. I wanna find Urasawa’s Monster.” Takumi remembered the image of Mukuro crying. They were tears of loneliness. “Because you know, it’s hard to make friends when you’re a murderer for some reason. Murderers are lonely…”    
  
“Yeah. Whoever you were connected to, you would just hurt them in the end. You’re an unnecessary risk.”    
  
“But, if you only existed to kill people. If your only emotion was the desire to kill others. If you killed to fulfill the concept of killing people. Then you wouldn’t care whether you were alone or not.”   
  
The girl he thought was the perfect killer, turned out to be just a lonely girl and he loved her all the same, but he could not accept that. He still wanted to find it, the person who lived only to kill. If he could be more like them maybe this pain would go away.   
  
It was not just that he was lacking in things, but he also had enough of a self to notice that he was alone. If he could throw everything away, that would be best. How fun it would be to just be a psycho killer who killed for no reason.    
  
It was more fun than being a traumatized little boy trapped in a locker.    
  
  
🦔   
  


People kill people.   
People save people.    
  
But without all the drama, that’s just human interaction.    
And for instance, for Medaka, saving people was an act of killing people.   
  
She mothered their individual free will. She pushed their heads underneath the water. She did it with a smile. Or at least that was always the dangerous kind of person she could become. Before she was simply insensitive, she did it without realizing, but now she had eyes that could see anything.   
  
It was impossible for her to be insensitive now. She could no longer be unaware. That was the worst part of those eyes, the awareness, too aware, aware of everything, aware of yourself, aware of others.    
  
She thought more than ever what a relief it would have been to be stupid, to not have a single thought in her head.    
  
She was ambushed and a katana’s blade flew right past her head as she suddenly used her reflexes to dodge. “Tch, just let me kill you already. Why are people so difficult? They’re always like  _ wah, wah, I want to live.  _ Don’t they know what an honor it is to be killed by a super cool murderer. I wish it would happen to me. I’m jealous even. I’m jealous of every murder victim in the world.”    
  
“You’re ranty today,” Kei commented quietly behind him.    
  
“Well, I’m in a good mood. I rant when I’m in a good mood. I rant when I’m in a bad mood too. I experience a variety of moods and all of them cause me to rant.”    
  
Takumi simply lacked the ability to detect natural pauses in conversations, or to tell when other people were listening, so he made up for this by talking more in hopes that that would solve the problem.    
  
Medaka smirked. It was only in danger like this, in the center of things, that she could hear her heart beating again. Odd, she was so over-sensitive to everything now, and yet she felt oddly dull, numb even, like too much sensitivity was robbing her of it at the same time. “You’re using Pekoyama-senpai’s sword techniques.”    
  
“No, this is her killing style. IIt’s used for assassination. Execution. Murder. Slaughter. Annihilations. Dispatching. Eradicating. Erasing.  Immolating. Neutralizing-”   
  
“Yes, we get it Hijirihara, you used your thesaurus,” Munakata cut him off behind him.    
  
  


“Oh neat. I didn’t know there were so many words for killing.” Medaka did not seem to be taking this too seriously. “Are you sure you’re alright with this? If Zenkichi knew you attacked me, that would hurt him.”    
  
“That’s fine. Zenkichi is my friend, and because I’m such a great friend I’m even willing to become his enemy.”   
  
“That uh… that doesn’t make sense. Why do people say things that don’t make sense trying to sound cool? Hmph, senseless.”    
  
“That’s you, that’s what you sound like.” A foldable knife fell from Kei’s sleeve, and he unfolded it, pointing it at her. “Don’t pretend you know what I’m thinking.”    
  
“Mocking me? I get trying to kill me, but bullying me on top of that is just mean.” Medaka looked as if she was pouting, and then suddenly struck forward punching Hijirahara as hard as she could in the gut and stealing his sword from him. “Well fine, heroes use swords. Why don’t you fight the hero? And don’t give me that crap about how heroes don’t exist in the real world I’m already over it.”    
  
Kei looked to check on Takumi but he looked absolutely delighted to be floored by a girl. Basically, he was useless no matter what, Kei assessed.    
  
He drew up a sword he was hiding in his pant leg and tossed it back to Takumi as he stood up once more. 

 

They both rushed her at the same time. Medaka had already experienced fights that were like fighting a mirror image, but this one was like a person teaming up with their own mirror image. Being attacked by a person and their shadow at the same time.   
  
She felt like if she punched one of them, her fist would sink right through them because they were not really there. Which one was real, and which one was just the image. She could fight two enemies at once, but not when they both seemed to understand each other like this more than she understood either of them.    
  
There was also  one other reason she was not doing as well. She came up with a simple tactic to stop herself from copying their killing technique. She fought with her eyes closed, and kept them at bay using her legs in the savante style. The same way Zenkichi had fought against Kumagawa so long ago.    
  
She was perfectly repelling their attacks, but yet she had no time to counterattack either. Neither of them were making any ground over the other, and Medaka continue shadowboxing, fighting an illusion. 

  
Then she realized, even without her eyes she could still see. Sounds became clearer. Now a pair of headphones were permanently attached to her ears. She heard the steps they would take before they even took them.    
  
It was like music from every radio station playing in her head at once. It was like being simultaneously able to read the minds of every single person in the crowd. The sheer amount of information was so overwhelming, and yet none of the details became blurry or indistinct.    
  
If a waterfall were to fall on her head she could hear every single individual drop. The amount of noise was defeaning, and yet she felt if she gauged out her eardrums she would still be able to hear. The noises would be inside of her head, echoing, echoing, and her thoughts would just get louder and louder.    
  
She thought more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and analyzed it again, and again, and again, and again, and thought harder and harder and harder and harder. She knew eventually her skull was just going to split.   
  
She hoped for that.    
  
“Learn to tie your tie properly! Look appropriate if you’re going in public. It’s like you’re asking to be judged. Stop slacking, stop being lazy.” She grabbed Takumi by the tie, and then slammed him hard straight into Kei causing them both to collide together.   
  
Medaka opened her closed eyes. “You two could have put up more of a fight. I wanted to have more fun than that. Not fun, not funny at all.”   
  
So she said, and yet Munakata started to laugh. Medaka had never seen him laugh before, she did not even know he was capable of such a thing. So restrained a person.    
  
“Hey, Medaka-chan. Are you still helping people?”    
  
“Of course I am.”    
  
“That was just violence. You’re a violent person you know.”   
  
“...”   
  
“Do you know why Kumagawa hated you? It’s because your violence was good violence, and his was bad violence. You act all good but in the end you’re just like Munakata.”   
  
“Just like you?”  
  
“No, the other Munakata. If someone doesn't want to be saved, or doesn't want to be helped, you'll just beat them and force them to accept your help. You don't give a shit about what they want in the end. You just need to fall a little further and you’ll be like him, saying killing someone is saving them.”   
  
“I’m not…”   
  
She remembered Munataka’s bloodshot eyes as he raised his sword.  _ This is saving you.  _   
  
“W-we’re friends. I’m sorry if I did something wrong, or if I misunderstood you. I really want to help because we both care about my Zenkichi in the end-”   
  
“I don’t want to be helped by you.” Kei gave a once in a lifetime smile. You only live once, and you can only kill someone once, it was that kind of smile. “I really hate violence.” 


	35. PEOPLE LET PEOPLE LIVE

Munakata Kei met a boy who was like the sun.

On a warm summer day Zenkichi dressed himself in only a jersey, and a pair of shorts that barely reached past his thighs. His golden brown hair fell messily over his face. His hair a mess, sweat rolling down his face in tiny translucent beads. He was rough hued, his face was angular and uninviting but Munakata wanted to touch it anyway. 

He pulled hard on his shirt, balled it up, and wiped his forehead with it. When the tank top lifted, Munakata could see Znekichi’s stomach underneath it, and the way his muscles worked. It was like every part of him was shaped individually from clay to fit perfectly together.  
  
Why did the sun rise and set in the morning? A basic philosophical question. The sun rose, because Zenkichi woke up. It fell fell when Zenkichi fell asleep. Zenkichi stood in its light, and his darker colored skin, tinting it with golden leaflet.

His eyes seemed to pass right through you, just like rays of light. Being in his presence just felt warm. Munakata wanted to take him home, to hold a piece of the sun in his hands and get burned by it, or maybe place is hands inside the sun and feel its warmth.  
  
You could burn up those eyes.  
It was summer. It was suicide.  
  
He understood why some people were tempted to touch fire, to let a flickering flame brush over their hands if only for a moment. Bewitched by the sun, wanting to fly towards it, desiring to kiss even if it would melt wax lips. His fingers reached for Zenkichi and messed with his hair, and he wanted to put a crown of leaves on that boy and call him Apollo.  
  
“Huh? Is there something in my hair?”  
  
Zenkichi’s head shook, clueless, golden, innocent, and everything else.  
  
Munakata let go, feeling the tips of his fingers burn. After touching Zenkichi he was not sure he would be able to touch anything else and feel the same. “No, it’s just a mess. I was fixing it.”  
  
“You’re a really considerate guy, Munakata. I’m surprised you don’t have more friends than just me.”  
  
“Considerate?”  
  
“Mmm, well it’s like you’re always watching over me, and you notice things I don’t.” Zenkichi wrapped the towel around his neck and sat down in the grass next to Munakata, the two of them had completed their run together.  
  
“Am I bothering you?” Sharply, as if trying to cut loose Munakata looked away.  
  
“Mmm, no. I mean it’s kind of nice. Medaka-chan’s been my friend all my life so it’s not like I’ve been lonely or anything but sometimes it feels like… she’s not looking at me… like we can’t just be normal friends, or something.”  
  
Munakata wanted to be what Zenkichi wanted, and he thought Zenkichi was very beautiful, he would make a beautiful corpse. While they were this close it would be so easy to use a knife. The thought of his disfigured corpse spraying blood in every direction, the sight of his blood painted everywhere, made his head spin and his knees weak. This person’s blood would be especially beautiful, Munakata thought. He still remembered the scars on Zenkichi’s back that he had caused, and when he stared at his naked back now after Zenkichi lifted his shirt over his head to cool off, he felt it was the most elegant thing he had ever seen in his life. 

  
All he needed to do was draw a knife out and slit his throat, then as it sprayed everywhere he could feel a little bit of Zenkichi’s warmth. “Just right now, I thought about killing you.”  
  
“Huh, weird.”  
  
“It’s not just weird. I’m not someone who can ever be a normal friend to you. My feelings for you won’t let me be just a friend… you… you’ll-” The blood drained from Munakata’s face. “If I killed someone would you still be able to call me your friend?”  
  
“Well, if you killed anybody I would probably hate you. I’d definitely want you to go to prison. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, I can write you once a week, and visit you every day they let me until you feel sorry about it.”  
  
“Why won’t you give up on me?”  
  
“Giving up is not my style.”  
  
“Really, you said you were going to ask Medaka out by the end of summer but you gave that up already.”  
  
“Shut up, I was trying to look cool man!” 

  
“When I look at you, I’m always thinking about killing you,” he admitted cooly. The thoughts washed over his brain like ice melting.  
  
“But I know you wouldn’t do it. You’re always looking at me, but because of that you don’t notice anything that’s good about yourself.” The words he said next were not poetry at all, and yet Munakata could not help but falling for them. _I think you’re a cool guy. I don’t need any reason than that to be your friends._  
  
Zenkichi was not trying to fix the fact that he constantly thought about killing others, he just wanted to be his friend. That day Munakata understood why Zenkichi said those words, because they were what he wanted to hear from the person he cared about the most. Zenkichi just wanted to be Medaka’s friend because he liked her, it was as simple as that.  
  
That was why his love was unrequited, because Zenkichi was _special_ to Medaka. At the time Munakata knew he would never reach the sun, so he thought he was okay with just being that boy’s shadow. He decided to support that boy’s happiness and let those two get together.  
  
Then Munakata saw it, the way Zenkichi fell into Enoshima Junko’s arms. “The person Medaka-chan kissed was the most hardworking version of myself. The one who’s always doing his absolute best… the one who’s just a bluff. There’s no way Medaka-chan’s destined to be with me. It’d take nothing short of a miracle for her to fall in love with the real me.” 

  
In order to get the person you like to reciprocate your feelings, you need to build up another self. Everyone does it. Dressing up to draw their gaze. Acting out a fake personality. If I want to stand alongside someone like Medaka, getting hurt once or twice is just inevitable. 

 

At that moment Munakata realized. _Zenkichi will never be happy with this girl. He will never be enough for her._  
  
The only time the moon and sun could ever touch, was when the moon eclipsed the sun. A shadow crept up on light, ready to blot it out with its own desires. “All Zenkichi wanted was a friend who could accept him for who he really was and you couldn’t even give him one thing.”  
  
Munakata punched the ground to force himself to stand once more. Kumagawa was right, someone like him could never be a minus he never once smiled. But, if he ever could smile one day he wanted to show it to Zenkichi. A wish like that was strong enough to make him stand up again.  
  
“And yet you expect everything from him.”  
  
“I… I don’t.”  
  
“Don’t lie. Yeah, this is… this is probably the first time I’ve actually wanted to kill someone. All of that before was just playing pretend.” Munakata called back to Takumi. “Take this seriously!”  
  
“I take everything seriously. There is nobody more aware of the vicissitudes of life between tragedy and comedy then I am, and I’m always watching-”  
  
“Stop using big words to pretend like you’re being serious.”  
  
“Yes, senpai.” Takumi gave a resigned sigh, and the two of them stood up and resumed their teamwork once more. The answer to their perfect teamwork was simple, Munakata constantly thought of ways to kill Medaka, and then Takumi carried them out.  
  
Takumi was so good at getting into the mind of murderers he could read their intention to kill just from their eyes alone. He never once saw someone’s eyes as sharp as Munakata’s, he looked at everyone around him like they were already dead.  
  
Sometimes Takumi wondered why Munakata did not just gauge those eyes out. Maybe, after all this time he held onto some small hope that he would see some flickers of life in the world if he kept looking for it. How stupid, Takumi thought, but he could not help thinking that senpai was at least a little admirable.  
  
There were idiots too dumb to live like him, and there were idiots too stupid to die like senpai.  
  
The two of them continued the onslaught on Medaka forcing her to fight defense once more, but they were not trying to kill her not really, they just wanted to provoke her in attacking. As Takumi jumped from wooden beam to wooden beam of the temple circling around Medaka he felt a little bit like he was fighting a stranger.  
  
Medaka did not acknowledge him at all, she did not even see him as a threat. The reason she was able to fight against two psycho killers without breaking a sweat is because the same way that Kumagawa could not conceive of the notion that he would win, Medaka did not understand that she might lose, that she could fail.  
  
Even when people genuinely wanted to kill her, their feelings did not reach Medaka. She simply did not understand that she was being hated. She was oblivious to both love and hate. Munakata threw razor blades to Takumi. Another part of their teamwork, Munakata was a walking armory and Takumi capable of copying killing techniques knew how to wield every single weapon Munakata threw his way.  
  
He shuffled the razor blades between his fingers like they were playing cards, and looked at Medaka’s still closed eyes. Takumi had been climbing like a monkey around the temple the entire time and attacking her from every angle, but for once he dropped down right in front of her.  
  
He rushed forward and attacked her head on, only for her fist to catch his square in the face. If only she had a little bit of Kumagawa’s guile, if she had sucker punched him in that moment she might have actually won.  
  
He slashed his hand forward revealing the razor blades, the tips of them dug into one of Medaka’s eyelids and cut straight through. Her eye was forced open because she no longer had any lid to close it.  
  
“Now you can’t close your eyes. Look at how ugly we are, Medaka-chan. We want to kill you.” Takumi said, with a pointed smile. “Oh, but please don’t think I’m ugly. I have no interest in you at all as a person but if you think I’m ugly, I’ll probably start feeling bad about my appearance again.”  
  
“You should feel bad about your appearance, you can’t even bother to dress yourself properly.”  
  
Medaka said, as she changed her punch halfway through and sucker punched him hard enough he looked like a doll thrown across the room. Her left eye was now opened, reddened by a stream of blood, her right eye still closed. She turned her one-eyed glare on Takumi unable to give a name to this feeling that had blossomed like a bloodied flower inside of her.  
  
“Do you enjoy being ugly? Do you like being jealous? How unpleasant. You can choose to be whoever you want to be, and you choose to be this, I don’t get it.”  
  
Medaka stood over Takumi and slammed her foot into the ground right next to his head. The ground cracked and fragmented. Takumi understood in an instant, how easy it would be for her to break him into little pieces like that, and he smiled at the thought.  
  
“I really like that look in your eye right now. You look like someone who could kill the whole human race if she wanted to.” Takumi lipped his lips, wanting the taste of blood to stay on them forever. “You’re super cool right now, just the best, I’m sorry I called you lame behind your back so many times. Actually forget that I said I was talking about you behind your back.” 

 

“You’re not taking this seriously.”  
  
“Yep, and neither are you. I mean, aren’t you angry at all? Two people tried to kill you. Not for any good reason. He’s just jealous that you have Zenkichi. I think love is a pretty boring reason to kill, are you going to die in such a lame way.”  
  
“No.” Medaka picked up her stolen sword and pointed it to Munakata. The sound of her slowly sliding the katana out of its sheath was so quiet and subtle, and yet as devastating on Munakata’s ears as the roar of a beast. 

  
The blow crashed into both of his arms, and sent him spinning across the floor. Medaka raised the sword up once more. “I understand now. You two just don’t know any better. You don’t know the right way to do things. That’s why… you need me to show you what’s right.” She smiled like a girl on a magazine cover, inviting, a smile that enticed anyone. “I’ll just cut your arms off, make it so you can’t kill people anymore. That’s right, or maybe it’s left…”

Medaka muttered as she swung down towards Munakata’s right shoulder. As he saw blood appear at the corner of his eyes, it was only at this moment he realized why he had been fighting so hard.  
  
Why he fought like he wanted to die.  
Why he ran away like he was desperately clinging to life.

 _I love him. I love my good friend Zenkichi._  
  
He reached forward, wanting to hold Zenkichi with that hand once more. Only for him to see a hand sliced through right in front of his eyes. 

 

🦔

 

“She doesn’t even want your help.”  
  
Nanami whispered into his back.  
  
“Huh? What is that? I was too distracted from carrying your fat ass that I couldn’t even hear you.”  
  
“Your neck is so lovely, so thin and breakable.” Despite the fact that she despised touching others, just to make good on her threat and for no other reason especially not to hold onto him tighter she crossed both of her arms over his neck.  
  
Matsuda could feel her shiver without even looking back. “If you want, I can get you a pair of gloves so you don’t have to touch anything.”  
  
“How about you gauge my eyes out so I don’t have to look at you, just the sight of you makes me sick.”  
  
“That’s fair, but no I still got things to do,” Nanami’s personality stayed exactly the same, and her face remained a death mask no matter how much they talked. Yasuke did not expect to get any closer at all no matter how much they talked, he just liked hearing the sound of his own voice. 

  
She was like a girl who was falling asleep in front of him, he had to keep talking, had to keep her away somehow, no matter how enticing the dream she was being pulled into he had to keep her eyes open.  
  
“Kurokami doesn’t even know how to say the words _I need help._ How can she know if she wants help or not?”  
  
“Oh, you’re right. Everybody in the world is just a crying and scared little girl desperately waiting for you to save them. You definitely don’t have any issues at all.” 

  
“You’re a condescending bitch, you know that?”  
  
“It’s so comfortable up on this high horse. I don’t ever want to get down. I think you should just accept the fact that a beauty like me is meant to be admired like a goddess.”  
  
Nanami thought the joke was funny, because she was not beautiful, and nobody would ever admire someone as sick in her in so many ways. If only she could be dried up and die, and then burned so the germs in her body would not spread.  
  
“I was joking.”  
  
“Huh? How is that a joke? You are beautiful.”  
  
“Bad taste. Maybe you’re just so much of a fool, you don’t even know what’s funny.” Nanami’s gave an evil smile. “Don’t you think Medaka is a little too eager to start thinking that people belong to her, I think she wants some new toys to play with.”  
  
“Yeah, of course she’s losing her shit. Her whole family died. She sympathizes with everybody here, but not a single one of us gave enough of a damn to sympathize with her.”  
  
Matsuda smashed his hand into a nearby telephone pole. That was not enough, so he hit his useless hand over and over again until it broke. Staring at his bloodied fingers he noticed how much his hand looked like a child’s.  
  
“Even though I swore I’d never do that shit again.”  
  
Matsuda still remembered how he had to wear long sleeves to cover up the marks his mother left on his arms. How he hid those bruises away, because he knew he would be taken away from his mother and not a single adult would be left to watch over him. The mother he had left was quite ugly, but she was still beautiful in his memories.  
  
He could not cry. He was told over and over again not to cry because things were hard enough on his mother as it was. He could not think of his own pain, because the pain of everybody else around him was far more important. His mother forgot about him, and he was no longer allowed to be a child anymore without his mother.  
  
That was why he knew what it was like, losing your family and feeling like you could not even cry or admit how lost you were. He knew that feeling of being passed from person to person but never truly sympathized with more than anybody else. 

 

Yet, he never once sympathized with others. If he saw too much of himself in them, he would break. The image would become warped like it was in the spotty cracked mirror. Seeing someone else’s pain would be like admitting his own pain.  
  
That was why when he found Mukuro crying alone, he said nothing. He simply stared at her back and watched at the girl’s shoulders hitched. He thought Junko’s younger sister was too quiet, too shy, that she did not have any emotions at all. Whenever she was next to Junko she was easy to forget about.  
  
Under her breath Mukuro apologized again and again. _Sorry Junko. Sorry. I’ll apologize so. Don’t leave me._ Matsuda knew her feelings, having one person in the world and being afraid to lose them. She probably let Junko do anything to her. He already knew he would do anything Junko asked him too, but since he was only in his first year of middle school he was convinced that was a romantic notion.  
  
Suddenly, it was like everything made sense. Junko did not seem to get along with her sister at all, and yet the two of them were always inseparable. He understood, but he did not want to understand. In that moment he hated Mukuro for crying, for showing her his true feelings, because that detail got in the way of his happiness with Junko.  
  
He wanted to forget he had ever seen her like this. As he closed the door and backed out of the room, Mukuro noticed him. She turned around and smiled. Matsuda had never had his heart broken by a single smile like this before.  
  
“Matusda-kun, when you marry Junko-chan will we be family too?”  
  
“Y-yeah, no worries.”  
  
He was begged her with his eyes.  
_Please lie to me._ _  
_ _I don’t want to know why you’re crying._ _  
_ _It’s going to break because of you._  
  
“You're so nice. No wonder she likes you so much.”  
  
Matsuda tried his hardest to never speak with her after that, until she became far, far away. Nanami in the present moment murmured into his ear. “Aren’t you making this about what you want again?” She said in an almost seductive manner,  hissing like a garden snake. “What is it you want again? Do you even know?”  
  
“I want for you to fall off your high horse, then get your skull crushed and die.”  
  
“You’re too sweet.”  
  
“That’s the problem. You’re all so used to being told your special it becomes your whole identity. You can’t suffer like a normal person does because that’s too droll for you, too fucking boring.” Matsuda raised his voice. “You think trauma doesn’t affect you? You think you’re better than everyone else?”  
  
“Yes, I do think I’m better than everyone else. Are you going to keep asking such stupid questions?”  
  
“I heard you earlier. You said you’re this sick because god is punishing you for being too talented. At first I felt bad for you, but now I just want to laugh. No, no, no, no, I think it’s hilarious how you guys are always like, _I don’t want to be special, all I’ve ever wanted was to be normal._ But you’re the ones who refuse to let go of the idea that you’re not special fucking flowers.”  
  
Nanami felt like her petals were being peeled back one by one. She had never felt so utterly naked before, if Matsuda looked back at her she might flush. She could feel his delicate hands, plucking her.  
  
“You know what I don’t even think there is a god, because what kind of god would let that bitch Junko be born in the first place? But if there is a god, I highly doubt that he would give so much of a shit about you that he’d personally go out of his way to punish you your whole life.”  
  
He pulled her apart. Her stem, her roots, her branches, her leaves, and then she felt it. The girl who only wanted to be a flower, was burning up. She could hear the crackling as flame ate through her petals until they burned away into nothing.  
  
“You just happened to be born smart. You just happened to be born really, really sick. There’s no reason at all why you’re suffering so much, because nobody gives a shit about you. And you don’t want to accept that, so you made up this little story about how god is punishing you, and your existence is wrong, and what the fuck ever.”

Her flower felt violated. Trembling, trembling in the breeze. If flowers could cry they would always be crying, because of how short their lifespans were, because of how many times they needed to die in order to remain beautiful.  
  
“You’re clinging to my back, and hiding your face because you don’t want to cry.  You’re trying not to cry, just like everybody else, because you’re already a normal girl, Nanami.” 

  
The words she wanted to hear the most, from the person she hated the most. 

 

“You think I want this? Any of this? Your tongue isn’t just rude, it’s cruel.”  
  
“So, what is it you want.”  
  
“I want to die.”  
  
“Liar.” 

 

“I want to spend more time with my family. I want to travel a bunch of different places with my brother, and make fun of his terrible cooking.”  
  
She saw herself older and taller than her brother. A self she could never grow into because she was stuck in this frail, glass prison of a body. She reached out and touched his head, scolding him gently. In her dreams, her brother depended on her for once. 

Crows were gathering around her. They landed on abandoned buildings and powerlines. She could hear their murderous laughter, and knew she was the one they were laughing at. 

She saw herself looking into the mirror and smiling because she liked what she saw. Her and her brother standing in front of an airport nervously waiting, as another young girl rushed towards them and threw her arms around Rantaro. She was able to tell her other younger sister that they would be together as a family from now on and it was not a lie.  
  
Crows followed her because they could smell a corpse that would die soon. She knew nothing she did in life would matter soon, to them she was just their food. They would tear her corpse apart with her beaks, pluck out her eyes, and fight over her skin with their claws.  
  
She saw herself looking at flowers without being gripped by melancholy.  She could watch the flowers hanging off of trees change with the seasons, and not feel like she would be the next to fall. She had time now, time to watch the beauty of the seasons changing.  
  
The crows around her all melted into each other, and all she saw was a monster of feathers, talons, and eyeballs that was watching her, bleeding pitch black, and waiting for her to die. 

  
“I want to make friends and hang out with them, study for school, have dreams about the future. I… I want to grow up.”  
  
In her dream and her brother fought over who between them was tallest. They had a childish fight between siblings that they could apologize for later. He reached out and touched the top of her head ruffling her hair. THat was a dream she could only watch from behind, as the image of her and her brother both slowly walked away from her.  
  
She e was just a small sick girl clinging to his back. She could not grow any more of this, she could not get any older or she would die from sickness.  
  
“I can’t do any of that for you.”  
  
“Then, I want to die.” 

 

  
🦔

 

Sakukura caught Medaka’s sword in his hand as she swung down. “Hey, how many times do I have to tell you brats? School rules say no fighting.” 

 

His dark skin stained red with blood as she ripped the sword away from his hand. Juzo’s face tightened like he was trying not to feel pain.  
  
“What are you two doing here?” Medaka asked, before suddenly answering her own question. “Wait, don’t answer it’s pointless. I already understand. Kamukura sent those two to ambush me at the temple, because he knew you two would interfere. You’re all pieces on his board how boring, don’t you want to be human?”  
  
“Uhh… what else would I be?”  
  
“I think she’s talking metaphorically,” Chisa said with a pleasant smile behind Sakakura.  
  
Medaka tossed her sword to the side no longer needing it. “Super high school level boxer, huh? What a boring talent.”  
  
“You’re not gonna call it boring when I’m kicking your ass!”  
  
“Juzo, don’t pick a fight with one of the students.” Chisa chided him.  
  
Medaka let him make the first swing, and when an iron pipe hit her on the side of the head she felt nothing.  
  
Nothing.  
  
She touched the side of her head, and felt an unpleasant wet ooze leaking out and then looked at her own fingertips to see red nails just like Enoshima Junko. She dug her nails even deeper to draw blood, but still felt nothing, no spark of life. Medaka remembered her previous life, people who were able to laugh and smile normally all around her, it was like staring into a dream, like a lie in front of her eyes. For the first time she felt like she was able to smile, like it was okay for her to laugh, it was exhilarating.   
  
Perhaps Chisa was right, when it came down to it she was someone incapable of feeling pain. That was why she had yet to cry a single tear over her family’s death. Now that she thought about it when her sister ran away for several years, did she even miss her? Did she get lonely at night? Did she lay in her sister’s bed and try to feel for any remaining trace of her sister?  
  
No, the entire time she thought that Kuji-nee would come home so there was nothing to cry about.   
  
It was like she did not feel any pain at all. The small amount of numbness when she saw normal people, who could smile normally, laugh normally, was that her soul aching. Perhaps it was just emptiness she felt, a lack of pain, the same way one tingles when there arms or legs are missing because the body forgets those parts are missing and believes they are still there and still functional.  
  
She could not feel other’s pain and therefore she could not empathize with them. That was why it was so easy to break Juzo’s face with her fist, to climb on him and keep hitting. 

She knew what the pain of the soul was like. She know how loneliness felt. But that pain was not real, nothing more than a delusion she was chasing. It was pain that could easily be forgotten with a lie, or with an excuse.  
  
If her soul was real then someone else could touch it, and maybe the wounds on it would bleed all kinds of ugly colors, and she would be painted in purple, and blue, and a rusted away maroon, and no one would call her beautiful again.

A voice in her head spoke over and over again. Could she really forgive people like this?  
  
She was trying so, so hard to understand them but she could not understand why Takumi would want to kill another person.  
  
_“You just wanted Zenkichi to die without you, that way he’d never leave you.”_

Munakata’s voice whispered in her ear. “No, I didn’t. I would never want that.”  
  
It made no sense. The people in front of her made no sense, like they were hurting her for no reason, like they did not have hearts. Then suddenly, it clicked in her mind. It was like solving a math problem with no solution, she wrote out the formula for the aimless equation.  
  
“I get it. You’re not human. That’s how you can kill people, you can't feel their pain. You're just like me.”   
Medaka smiled, feeling relieved of her burden for the first time.  
She gave a crooked half smile while bleeding pink from one eye.   
  
“You’re disqualified from being humans. I.. I don’t have to love you."    
  
Juzo who had been taking her hits this entire time, because it scared him too much watching a girl in such obvious pain that she did not even realize it. He felt like if he swung back he might break her.  
  
He was supposed to be tough, it was his only good quality. He could put up with one brat’s tantrum. At that moment he grabbed her by both of her wrists, and stopped her from throwing another punch.  
  
His hands in her hands.  
  
People kill people.  
They were so ugly.  
People let people live.  
THey were beautiful.  
  
But she did not want to see things that way, she wanted to look at only butterflies without thinking that one day they might fall out of the sky and die.  
  
“Don’t talk that way. Once he started talking that way, Munakata started to change.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“He didn’t need to be strong, but he kept pretending. Pretending all this time. To be something he wasn’t, then it was like his real self disappeared. He murdered it… He... “ Juzo gave a bloodied smile. “My friend killed himself right in front of me, and I did nothing.”  
  
He was whining all this time.  
That if he was weak Munakata would throw him away.  
Yet, he never once told Munakata that he liked the weak scrawny little boy he had met so long ago. He liked the boy who looked like a fresh layer of snow fell on him, trembling like he was always cold.  
  
“Zenkichi doesn’t want you to do this to yourself, and I didn’t… I didn’t want Munakata to do that to himself.”  
  
Medaka hesitated, her fist freezing right in front of his face.  
As she did, Yasuke finally caught up to the scene.  
  
For a moment he thought he was too late. Then Medaka stood up on her own and turned to meet both of them. She did not say anything. The look on her face was entirely unreadable, she could not say anything.  
  
It hurt so much.  
It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.  
The words she could never say, but she bottled them up and kept them inside of her like they were precious things. This first time feeling, this pleasure of knowing that she was truly alive.  
  
“Kurokami, you look ugly as shit. Uglier than usual I mean.. Here, eat this it’s a painkiller.”  
  
Medaka just nodded, and swallowed.  
She immediately fainted, because he had just given her a highly potent tranquilizer.  
  
“Didn’t I say not to trust people so easily? Listen when other people are talking, dumbass. Now let’s get your fatass out of here.” He grabbed her arm and started to drag her on the ground.  
  
Nanami on his back stared in confusion. “I thought you were going to talk to her.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m not good at talking to people.”  
  
That’s the theme of your entire life right there, Matsuda-kun.


	36. Real Girl

As Medaka slept, Yasuke observed she looked like a doll. A lifeless thing lying helplessly on the bed, unable to control when she moved her limbs unless someone else puppeteered her. If she were to stir suddenly and awake, it would be like watching the dead come back to life.

He remembered a girl like that. A girl with an empty head. Unlike other girls she was simple, she simply loved him, she simply wanted to be with him, when she fell asleep like this in the single bed of the biology lab he would watch her pondering her simplicity as the softlight softly streamed to the window, and touched her face as if to caress her. Her beautiful life devoid of any sadness. The perfect empty life. The existence of the “real girl” behind Enoshima Junko that he never thought he would find.  
  
Matsuda lost his real self a long time ago. He became the fake son to a mother who forgot him. He became the fake good child, when all of the adults around him told him he should not burden his mother any more. Even back then he was smart enough to see through the lies adults told him to comfort him. He never smiled, because he could not trust the smiles of other people around them. How many of those smiles are real? All of them or only a handful? He had no idea what a real smile even looked like anymore. But he knew more than anything else, he was as much a fake as the rest of them.  
  
He was only capable of pretending, pretending to be strong, pretending not to cry, pretending he was doing this all for others. Maybe at some point in time he thought that his life was good and real but reality soon stripped that away. 

 

He couldn’t stand it. He was just left there like some fake toy. He felt misplaced and lost. That was why, he just wanted one thing to be real, wanted one person to be real. His feelings for her were real. The promise they made was real. He might have been made of tin, but he had a clockwork heart.  
  
Matsuda’s real self was Junko. Junko’s real self was Matsuda. They both kept and swallowed the keys to each other’s hearts. That was what he wanted, that was what he wanted but… the real Junko, the precious memories they spent a lifetime make, he erased them all and thought the empty doll in front of him was beautiful.  
  
He felt at peace laying down in the sun with her. Even though, the sunlight could never reach fake flowers, with plastic leaves and perfumed scents.  
  
He met a real boy. He had jagged brown hair that curled up in the corners of his face, and tanned skin that was rough to the touch and felt like his fingertips brushing against the edges of a flame. The normal boy he would never see in the mirror.  
  
Matsuda was on top of him. He was next to him. Matsuda reached out and wrapped his hands around the neck of the boy. Like a tree branching out, he grew more and more arms. He had an arm for every part of that boy’s body he had violated. His hand held a scalpel, pliers, surgery scissors, forceps, needles, suture. His many arms moved with one goal, without hesitation or fumbling once.  
  
He is able to move all of those hands because they do not belong to them. He saw strings attached to the wrist of each hand, and somewhere there is an unforeseen girl, her hand larger than his, much much larger, her fingers curled around both Matsuda and this boy. Her red nails caressed his face.  
  
He was a god. He was made of so many arms. He had many hands and many eyes, and what he touched with those hands he destroyed. He was able to hold this boy with every one of his hands. He ruined this boy with each touch. He touched him everywhere, and in every way.  
  
He was a man. These hands could not hold anything. He had slowly stripped the boy of his skin, and replaced it with plastic. He had the softest skin now, wrapped entirely around him but it isn’t him. 

 

Brain scans, and harsh hospital lights, monitors, and sheets and sheets of paper monitoring him, and vomited up pills all fall away. The boy has a y-front cut across his chest, and down to his stomach, and he looks like he had been recently autopsied.  
  
And his hand has been inside of him, and he wrapped fingers around his heart. He flexed his fingers and made blood pump faster through his body, and in surgery the surgeon has absolute control over the body, he makes the boy breathe, he makes his heart beat. Then, with a scalpel he cut away all of the veins and arteries like red strings, and took the heart for himself.  
  
He has a feeling in his stomach, nausea, like his own stomach was trying to dissolve itself. He met a real boy and cut out everything inside of him until he had no weight. Even if he were on top of Matsuda, Matsuda would feel nothing, especially not a body crushing his. _His body, covering my body._ All of his strings were cut with a pair of surgical scissors. The shadow that connected his feet to the ground was severed.  
  
Matsuda thought he was better that way, more beautiful without his heart.  
  
No, that’s not what he wanted. It was all messed up, and the wires were crossed during surgery, but at the time he was sure his feelings were the real thing. Ryoko, Kamukura, his hands around their necks. If he was caught as their murderer, if he pled his place while his disposable gloves were still covered in their blood would anybody believe him. Would they believe him when he said this wasn’t what he wanted? 

 

『 _No, this is what you wanted_ .』Kumagawa’s voice in his ears. The boy’s arms, thin, crooked like a bone broken and healed over incorrectly wrapped around his neck. He had never been shown the real thing. He did not know what it was like.『 _You’re afraid of what they really feel. That’s why you want to give your love to dolls._ 』

But I love you, Yasuke-chan.  
Kumagawa’s voice tried to say those words, but Matsuda could not hear them. 

  
“Matsuda-kun, you look so cute when you’ve got that face like you’re contemplating whether to kill yourself or not.” And then there was this girl, Emukae who had showed up just to annoy him. “What? Did you want me to let you spiral into self loathing in peace?”  
  
Matsuda glared at her. The problem with all of these minuses was that they were perfectly capable of reading other people’s thoughts, it’s just that they didn’t care what you thought about them.  
  
“Senpai, sitting around and bitching isn’t going to solve any of your problems.”  
  
“But that’s the only thing I’m good for,” Matsuda said, his nasty tongue flicking back and forth. “I’m the comic relief for my own life, haha, it’s so fucking great to be me.” 

 

When other people told them he was complainging too much, Matsuda liked to complain more. He was a gentleman like that.  
  
“Aren’t you supposed to be a doctor?”

  
“Well yeah, but look how all my patients turned out.” Yasuke gestured at her, who had been a case study of his once in the past too, Kumagawa, Junko, Kamukura, Komaeda.  
  
“Just how many of your patients have you been attracted too, now that I think about it.”  
  
“I don’t want to answer that.”  
  
“Well, they say the problem with some doctors is that they care too much.”  
  
“I have the opposite problem, I don’t give a shit about anybody.” Matsuda kept an eye on the sleeping Medaka, he had no left her bedside once during the night. They returned to the hospital, but Kamukura was no longer there. “Hey, you’re pretty easy to talk to when you don’t declare your love for me every five minutes.”  
  
“What? I’ve gone five minutes without declaring my love for you? You must have been so lonely, Matsuda-kun.” 

 

Emukae Mukae. A zombie from a horror movie. A corpse that simply forgot it was a corpse. She seemed so much more alive than either of them, Mikan, Medaka, and himself. Even though she was a worthless girl compared to the people with talent. Even though her life was nothing but unchecked misery, she wanted to live more than any of them. 

 

She was pungent. An overpowering stench. The kind that once it entered you, it became all you thank about. It was foul and yet, Matsuda could not help but think that a rotten corpse flower was better, more alive, then a fake flower that smelled of pleasant perfume.  
  
The rafflesasia blooms only at night, and then it begins to decompose soon afterwards. A single bloom, a flower that would only open its petals once, but still Matsuda was curious what that would look like.  
  
“Why do you love me so much Emukae?” The question came out of his mouth far more honest then he intended it too. When he’s not being a smartass he just sounds like a naive little kid, and he hated the way words sounded when they came out of his mouth.  
  
“Why do you love Junko?”  
  
“Do you minuses always gotta be a smartass about everything?” Matsuda would kill for a normal conversation at this point, it was not so hard because he was already a murderer.  
  
“Answering a question with a question is rude.”  The bickering atmosphere seemed to evaporate in an instant. If there was ever a delicate moment in front of her, like glass, Emukae wanted to stick her hand through the window and get her fingers cut on the edges. “You love Enoshima because she saved you right? She manipulated you, but she was exactly what you needed her to be at that time.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“If she had been anybody else. If she was just a normal childhood friend, she wouldn’t be able to reach you that way. In fact you probably would have just grown apart, because you’re anti-social, and kind of an ashole.”  
  
“My official title is the Ultimate Half-Assed Asshole don’t forget it.” 

 

“So, the person you loved was the real her, right? That’s the only Junko you could ever have loved.”  
  
He was so scared when the emotion dropped out of Junko’s voice. When he saw nothing in her eyes. An already distant woman was running away from him, she became more distant, and inscrutable, and he could not understand the most important person in his life anymore. But, he understood now.  
  
As easily, and as much as he was terrified of this implacable person-  
He had fallen for her just as much.

“I was really envious, that someone like you could accept someone like her.” So, it was not a loving so much as wanting to be loved. A wanting to be accepted. She wanted to be real in the eyes of someone else. 

 

He laughed. Just, breaking the silent reverie. Smashing it to pieces. “You’re lying…You’re just messing with my head the same way Kumagawa does.”  
  
“Hey, hey. Don’t laugh. This is the one time you shouldn’t laugh. It’s not a matter to laugh off. It’s the truth, when I saw you, it was the first time I saw anyone so real, and someone like me. I’d do anything to be the one that saves you this time.”  
  
“I see.” Matsuda said, his voice scarred,  it sounded like there was blood churning in his throat. He raised his scalpel up to one of the stitches around her neck, and the blade picked her ever so slightly. “Then, would you die for me?” 

  
And at that moment Emukae knew that Matsuda did not mean die saving him, or sacrificing her life for his sake. Both of them were incapable of such a selfless love, because they had never been shown it, they did not know. That girl really loved him, but the only way she could show any real affection was to kill him. She could not be his girlfriend but she could be his killer. And to Matsuda that was real love. 

  
And Emukae did not want to die. She was scared, so scared of death, that her body was paralyzed by it. Every time she experienced another death in her immortal body she feared it more and more. If she said the wrong thing the stitches holding her together would come apart one by one. 

 

“Hey, does love always make you such an idiot?” She blurted out tactlessly.  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“I mean, this isn’t what you wanted right? I mean you probably thought you would die for Junko, and you would kill for her sake, but having to do both really sucked didn’t it? So what did you want back then?” 

 

He did not want to die because that took him away from Junko. He did not want to kill, because he was unable to enjoy his life with Junko, knowing that he had lived while others died. He could not forgive himself, he could not be forgiven. Yet, he was still alive. Just continuing to exist aimlessly, like a wind-up doll conducting some bad facsimile of humanity, seemed like a burden with each step. And yet, he didn’t even want to die, didn’t even want to kill himself.   
  
“I wanted to save her.” Matsuda finally said. “No, maybe I just wanted to be saved.” 

 

Emukae said nothing, she just smiled like him, and he did not think a rotten flower like her could produce such a sweet nectar.

  
At the root they were still the same. This was the shape their love took form. They both wanted to save others with their love, and they both lost sight of the real person behind that love. And in a world of lies, their feelings, their strongest feeling, their love felt like it was the truth. 

Matsuda clicked his teeth in annoyance. “You should pick someone less annoying to imitate.” 

 

🦔

 

Medaka woke up.  
A doll came to life. For a girl who was always fighting, she looked uncharacteristically gentle. Fragile was never a worse that he could use to describe herm but perhaps thinking that way in the first place was why he was stunned so much by her unguarded look.  
  
Anyone was capable of breaking after all. He hated the doctors who told him to be strong when his mother forgot about hi8m, and he hated himself for assuming that Medaka was strong and he was weak.  
  
He was never going to do it again, or that child would be left crying all alone. Her eyes blinked rapidly like she was trying to clear the tears away from them and she turned her gaze on him. “Mm, Matsuda-kun?” That name did not seem to belong to him. He wondered if it was alright, for someone to call out his name in such a happy voice. “What happened?”  
  
“You were hit with a dart and tranquilized by Kammy-chan.”  
  
“That’s not how I remember it happening.”  
  
“One of the side effects of the tranquilizer is it messes with your past few days of memory.”  
  
“Oh, if Matsuda-kun says so.”  
  
“You realize I’m messing with your head, right?”  
  
“Why did they let you become a brain surgeon again?” Medaka answered. She was so sincere it was almost impossible to joke around with her like this.  
  
“Tch. How the hell am I supposed to know what’s wrong with their heads? What am I some kind of brain surgeon?”  
  
“Yes, yes that’s what you are.” Sometimes he wondered why Medaka doubted she was a normal girl, because she made such a natural straight man. 

 

He wondered how he was supposed to say this. Kumagawa was so much better at saying the words others wanted to hear than he was. _I guess I’m scared._ “You’re uhh, you’re… not… bad…”  
  
“Are you okay, Matsuda-kun? You look like you burst a blood vessel trying to say something nice.”  
  
“Shut up I can do this! I don’t think you’re the worst person in the world, because that’s me.”  
  
“You don’t need to be kind to me, but I wish you would be a little nicer to yourself, Matsuda-kun.” 

  
An empty hospital room. White paint, cracked on the walls. A ceiling with tiles falling out. Medaka laying down in the bed in front of him, blankets half off of her.  
  
Sleeping beauty. Matsuda remembered thinking once that the only fairy who truly loved her was maleficent. Growing up in beauty, and growing up in grace, were thoughtless, shallow gifts. Maleficent cursed her to die before she ever grew up. She was like a mother who strangled her own child before they ever left her.  
  
Then the third fairy changed death, to sleep. If only she could sleep forever, she would stay beautiful forever. She never needed a prince to come wake her up. She was fine that way, happy that way.  
  
When he first met her, he did not believe Medaka was real. She was exactly like the clueless childhood friend that Junko acted like in all of their memories together. Since then she gained a healthy dose of reality. She should have stayed dreaming. Reality was painful, dreams were comforting. 

 

She sat up and looked at him, and in those eyes everything else about her disappeared. He forgot about her overwhelming strength, her talent, she looked like a little sister clinging to his arm. “Did Zenkichi fall in love with the real me?” 

  
He had told her as much before. That it was impossible for people to get close, that they could not understand each other. That you could know someone your entire life and yet not be any closer than a stranger.  
  
If that was true, then why did he make that promise with Junko?  
_If that was true, then why did we ever meet?_

 

_The promised we made back then, and our childhood memories they were all meaningless. I was just lonely when I met you. I wanted to touch and be touched. I wanted someone to confirm that I was still there, that I had not died along with my mother. And I was burned. I was burned because you loved me._

 

Color bleeds. Ad what they both bleed is the beautiful, mixed colors placed inside of them by other people. Their feelings for others make up every possible color for the both of them. He thought he could understand her.  
  
He was suddenly clueless why no one saw the girl in front of her as a human being all her life. Because she was stupid. Stupid as everybody else. She was stupidly easy to understand.  
  
The two of them were both lost in a maze of thorns. They felt roses growing outside of their bodies, and slowly wrapping themselves around them, and trying to get in until they had been consumed by the rose bush entirely. _She’s just lonely, so be nice to her._  
  
“Love really makes you an idiot, huh?” He reached forward and grabbed her on the ear, twisting hard, like he was scolding a younger sister. “Do you listen when anybody talks? Ever? I told you not to be dumb! What I would give to be inside your head, and see the world through your sparkly shoujo vision. Actually no that’s the worst thing ever.”  
  
“Eh…?” She had no idea what she said that sent Matsuda in a rant.  
  
Then again, Matsuda just liked to rant.  
  
“Are you so stupid you think you can spend fifteen years with someone and not know a single thing about them? That nothing would ever slip out? You’re too stupid to tell a lie you really think you could fool Zenkichi?” He twisted even further, causing Medaka to wince. “And, I personally find you to be the most annoying girl in the world. Having to spend five minutes in the room with you is my own personal hell. So, there’s no way Zenkichi would have put up with you his entire life if he didn’t like you.”  
  
“Some people find me quirky.”  
  
“Some people are quirky in the head.” Matsuda’s entire body heaved with his sigh. “You want to be a normal girl for Zenkichi? Who the hell even said that Zenkichi was normal in the first place? Have you seen those abs? Do you think those are the abs of a normal man?”  
  
“Why do you talk about his abs so much?”  
  
“You can’t become a normal girl no matter how hard you try, so quit it with the pouty shit already. I mean it, you better knock that mental breakdown off.”  
  
“I don’t think it works that way.” Medaka’s expression fell, as she was told the words she never wanted to hear, but the words she always heard. “Do you think it’s my fault? I wanted to be a normal girl, I wanted to suffer like everyone else… so it was taken from me-”  
  
“God, you really do think the whole world revolves around you don’t you? You can’t even listen to what I’m saying for five minutes-”  
  
“To be fair you were saying a lot of mean things all at once.”  
  
“You can’t become a normal girl because you already are one.” Matsuda interrupted her, shouting rudely in her face as usual. Then suddenly she heard a noise, so small yet so momentous, so clear and distinct, like a single drop of blood falling from a pricked finger. “You’re real, you were just like everyone else just by being born."

Matsuda felt like he was holding onto something impossibly heavy and straining against it, but he could not let go all the same. He could live bearing that weight. The same way Kamukura could live with his weight, and Medaka too.“You’re a normal pain in my ass.”  
  
Medaka began blinking again heavily. As if she were trying to stop tears, as if she were trying to see through a dream. Mirages made up of the water in the air directly in front of her, sent waves through the world she was seeing, and Medaka felt it like a string plucked inside of herself to make a beautiful note.  
  
She had a look in her eye of desperately wanting what she saw in front of her to be real. With teary eyes she asked. “That is the only nice thing you’ve ever said, why did you have to ruin it by immediately talking about your ass?”  
  
“My ass is all I think about. Especially since my head is shoved up there,” Matsuda answered, as crude and tactless as usual. The smile she showed him in that moment he thought for sure it was the real-  
  
“Matsuda-kuuuun! It’s been five minutes. I’ve come to declare my love for you again,” Emukae interrupted both of them.  
  
“Fuck off, I still hate you.”  
  
“You’re tsundering again.”  
  
“You’re right then I love you.”  
  
“Oh no, Matsuda-kun hates me! My heart is broken forever, nothing can stop the bleeding in my heart.”  
  
“Is she okay?” Medaka asked, not getting the joke.  
  
“Anyway, Matsuda-kun don’t you have something to tell her?” 

That was right. He had to tell her the truth. He had to use his real worlds. For some reason that was hard. He felt feverish. Frustrated. He had never been so goddamned shy, so why did he hesitate now?  
  
_I guess I’m scared._  
  
He looked away from her.

 _I don’t want her to hate me._  
  
It hurts.  
Really, really, why do you not understand that.

If it was real it would hurt her. They never talked about their feelings for each other, him and Junko, because they were so afraid of those feelings becoming real.  
  
“...”  
  
He was just a little bit scared of pain. 

  
“Well, if you’re not going to tell her now then you’ll probably never tell her no matter how many chances you get.” Emukae announced with her usual smile, and with no change of expression in her face at all, or even a glint in her eyes, she stabbed Matsuda right between his ribs, reopening the scar that would never fade away. 

 

🦔

  
Matsuda tasted blood in his mouth. He wished it was _her_ blood that he was kissing. This is what it felt like having all of his strings cut. He felt so weightless. 

In his Matsuda’s blood she saw the reflection of Zenkichi’s face, smiling bright like always. The boy was standing right behind her, and he wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. If the real Zenkichi were in front of her right now, he would never have held her like this.

Zenkichi, sliced open like a toy and thrown away. His stuffing falling out. Kujira, her sister ran away and she did not cry when she was gone. Maguro, his organs removed. Munakata, addicted to poison. Kumagawa his skull crushed. Her father, swords driven through his skull. Miyakonojou, he was her enemy but he died for her. Why was everyone leaving her now? Everyone. Everyone. Everyone.

 _“Didn’t you say you were going to save everyone, Medaka-chan?”_ Zenkichi whispered to her. _“But you can’t save them can you? You can’t save anyone.”_

Zenkichi’s voice was everything to her. It was the one voice she could not ignore. He would never let her go out of that embrace, that's what she felt. 

_“Even though I’m the most important person to you, you left me alone. How was that saving me?”_

“N-no, I…”  
  
_“This is what being weak means. You can’t save them. You might even become the reason they die.”_  
  
Medaka could not speak because there was blood clogging her throat.

 _“You were tricked by Kamukura! You were taken advantage of by Matsuda! You should have seen through both of them. It’s not that you don’t see it, you choose not to see, because you don’t want to look at people’s bad sides.”_  
  
She was supposed to be smart wasn’t she.  
  
_“And Shiranui, do you still think she’s your little friend? If you had just given up on her,  you would still be at school right now. If you had just chosen all of your other friends over her, they would be living their normal everyday lives. You couldn’t give up on one person, and now everybody is going to die!_ _  
_ _  
_ That was not true. _  
_ _  
_ _“Miyakanojou’s dead. Your family is dead. Munakata-senpai is insane…”_

That’s a lie because.  
_Because I…_  
  
_“Matsuda is doing to die in front of you, and when that happens it will be all your fault.”_

“I’m going to save him."

Medaka lunged out of bed at Emukae, but the girl nimbly dodged her. She was ethereal, harder to get her hands around then some kind of fairy. “Matsuda-kun you really should have known that if you don’t talk then there’s going to be tragic consequences, I mean your life was one big tragedy written and directed by Enoshima.”  
  
Medaka threw a heavy punch at Emukae, but the wall shattered and Emukae was completely untouched. Medaka saw bandages flying through the air as Emukae moved, a few of them snagged around her open hand. Those were Mikan’s bandages, she must have given them to her to fight.  
  
“And, Medaka-chan aren’t you supposed to be smart? You really couldn’t predict the stabby girl would stab someone? That’s basically my only personality trait.”  
  
Medaka tore through the bandages wrapped around her. She looked like a beast escaping its bonds. She rushed Emukae, but the girl was just faster as long as Medaka’s speed was limited. It was like trying to scoop of fish at the festival. They just kept falling out. One day at a festival, Zenkichi spent all his money trying to get a fish for her and he cried when he failed. Emukae kept slipping between her fingers like that.  
  
She felt she was breaking more of the environment then she was breaking Emukae. If this were a set, the likes would break and fall down from the ceiling any moment. Medaka’s kick tore through the air where Emukae was a moment ago as she saw the girl spring backwards on one hand.  
  
“Oh, I promised to tell you about Kumagawa-san, right? Well, I would hate to be a liar.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Nice. You’re doing a real good job as the empathy protagonist in the empathy story.” Emukae spun on her heel and continued to dance around. It felt like fighting something that did not exist. She was fighting against the light itself, something that lacked solidity. “Kumagawa-san really hated you? Do you know why? It’s because you told him he just needed to try harder.”  
  
“What’s wrong with saying that?” 

 

“Hey, Medaka-chan did you know right underneath Kumagawa-san’s shirt there are scars all over his body. He doesn’t remember who gave them to him exactly, but he thinks his parents did it.”  
  
“N-no, I didn’t know.”

  
“Did you know what Ajimu-san and Kumagawa-san’s relationship was like? Did you know when you first transferred into the school, Ajimu-san told him. _If only I had met that girl instead of you, I probably wouldn’t want to kill myself so much._ That no matter what Kumagawa did for her, she just said _You’re boring, maybe I should leave you for Medaka-chan._ ”

  
“I didn’t…” 

 

“Do you remember the day Kumagawa-san ripped off Ajimu-san’s face? He only did that to stop her from killing herself. He did not want anybody to hate Ajimu-san’s, so he let you treat him as the bad guy and beat him within an inch of his life. Do you know what he said when I begged him not to go, _it’s fine, everyone loves Ajimu-san but nobody will miss me._ ”  
  
“I…”  
  
“And you said you sympathized with him.”  
  
“I tried…”  
  
“Do you know what it’s like, when you’re trying your hardest just to live. When it feels like you’re constantly swimming and all you ever do is tread water. Then someone who knows nothing at all says: try harder.”  
  
Did Medaka know. Those few worlds denied everything about Kumagawa, all of his pain, and all of his comfort. She denied his everything.  
  
“I don’t get that. I don’t get what that has to do with stabbing Matsuda-kun.”  
  
Emukae finally stopped dodging as she faced Medaka head on. “If only you had tried a little harder. Then you could have stopped me from stabbing him. If you had been trying, then none of this would have happened. If you really wanted it, you’d actually try for once.”  
  
Three times. Three times she was denied.  
Was it subconscious on her part? Or did she say it all willingly? Knowing that those words would negate her entire being.

"If you kill someone, but you were only being kind, but you knew they could be better, but you were doing whats best for them. Does it stop being murder?"

If she could not be real then she was lonely.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of being left alone. She was afraid that she was always alone from the beginning. And yet, compared to Emukae and Kumagawa her anguish was just childish nonsense. It wasn’t that she wanted to sympathize with them, she wanted them to sympathize with her. She wanted to make it all about herself. She wanted to be center stage. Then maybe, maybe just one person would accept her. Because she had always been alone before that, together with Zenkichi before that.  
  
If she was always alone. If she was alone from the day she was born. If she was used to being alone. Then why did this hurt so much?  
  
Medaka’s fist connected with Emukae’s face.  
Emukae fell backwards.  
Emukae kept laughing.  
She laughed as she spat out teeth.  
She laughed with black spaces between her teeth.  
Medaka stared at that incomplete smile, and felt like she wanted to cry. 


	37. How to Feel Real

_You have everything that I lack._ _  
_ _You are everything that I long to become._

 

🦔

 

 _I am Izuru Kamukura._ _  
_ _I am Izuru Kamukura._ _  
_ _I am Izuru kamukura._

 

He tried to repeat the words again and again in his head but no matter how many times he tried they would not fit. He was overflowing. Two brains crammed within the same head, until neurons overlapped and twisted together. He was too much for this tiny frame. It felt like whatever he was before this, he was melted down into a tar like substance and pumped into the body of a reserve course student. Now, he overflowed, black tar fell out of his eyeballs, his ears, his nose he coughed as it coalesced around his lungs and vomited up ink.  
  
He was a poor fit for this body. He did not belong in this body at all. They never should have given him a name, if only he could have stayed in some vague, nameless thing, there and not there. He should have remained a schroeddinger’s cat, the moment the scientists observed him they tampered with the results.  
  
He felt too much, and yet nothing at all. An overpowering numbness. A lack of feeling that devoured his entire body. It was like he caught a disease that deadened his nerves, and he could slowly feel it spreading across him and yet he was powerless to stop it. 

 

 _I am Izuru Kamukura._ _  
_ _I am Izuru Kamukura._ _  
_ _I am Izuru Kamukura._

 

He was alive and yet he never had been born. He turned to the mirror and saw himself, soft skin, glass like features, and hair that reached his shoulders now in a blue hospital gown. There was definitely a boy looking back in the mirror and yet he could not get past the feeling that this body did not belong to him. He was simply a parasite which had overtaken the host.  
  
He saw the boy fall out of the mirror and dead at his feet. His limbs were thrown about and he looked like one of those chalk outlines left on the ground. That boy with spiky brown hair, and a much rougher edge to his appearance. He lay on the ground defunct, defective, like a broken doll.  
  
Kamukura suddenly understood why this boy had to die so he could be born. It was because if this boy died, the world would simply go on. A world without him. He was a reserve course student who could be replaced. He was somone nobody missed. Kamukura felt a pinprick emotion at the back of his head, his nerves fried from multiple surgeries came to life once more. 

He felt afraid for the first time. The boy at his feet had no face, no name. He was so easy to forget.  
  
“Who was I born from?” Kamukura asked, all alone in a pure white room, with a boy who swathed himself in a white labocat.  
  
Matsuda’s expression worsened. “Listen. I’m not going to let you call me daddy no matter how much you beg for it.”  
  
“That’s a terrible thing to say in front of an impressionable child. If I ever turn into a delinquent I’ll just tell the headmaster I learned it from you.”  
  
“The hell are you!? Some kind of baby duckling!? You just gonna walk up and imprint on the first person you see and start staring at their ass and following them around all day?  Well, I’ll be sure to wiggle it just for you.”  
  
“When children are born into this world their parents are responsible for them. Is there anyone responsible for me?” Kamukura asked. The boy was still appearing in the corner of his vision like some kind of ghost haunting him from just out of sight. 

 

From the severity of his face,  Kamukura could tell he had hit a sensitive spot. “Listen. Don’t go looking for them. The school paid your folks to shut them up after you died, and they just took the money.” 

  
Yasuke’s words were harsh, but unlike the scientists around him full of lies and self interest, Yasuke genuinely wanted the best for others. Yasuke never lied to him. Not once. Yasuke would never lie.

  
Kamukura doubted him all the same. When he hacked into the school’s computers, and appeared on his parents' doorsteps he felt a tightening of his chest. This feeling, was it hope? It was the first time he had looked into the future at all, because for Kamukura he was imprisoned within one long, painful, moment he felt he could never escape from.  
  
“Umm… who are you young man?” A faceless man at the door asked. “Do you need a haircut or something?” 

 

Kamukura’s hair had changed, but his body had not, and his face was the same. He looked to the driveway and saw an expensive car sitting there freshly waxed. The entire house looked like it was newly bought as well.  
  
“I’m here to see your son.”  
  
“Huh? We don’t have a son.” The woman said, wrapping her arms around the man.  
  
“Oh, my apologies if he’s no longer with you-”  
  
“We never had a son.” The woman said firmly a second time.  
“We don’t know who you’re talking about.”  
“You must have confused us for someone else.”  
  
He felt like his entire existence was cut off. Kamukura wandered somewhere, and found himself next within a graveyard. A family plot owned by the Hinatas. He saw the name of a grandfather (Torakichi) and grandmother (Natsu), but no name for a dead son. He was dead and he did not even have a grave to call his own.  
  
It was raining, but he did not notice.  
He did not notice until Yasuke came to find him, and held an umbrella over his head. He had no idea why he suddenly asked this, they were meaningless words, a boring question he already knew the answer to.  
  
“Are you going to forget me too?”  
  
“You’re too much of a pain in my ass to forget.” 

 

 _I am Izuru Kamukura._ He repeated those words again and again in his head, as if he were afraid of forgetting. 

 

🦔

  
They all appeared in the hospital at once to ambush her.  
As if they were on strings connected to each of Kamukura’s fingers.  
They all repeated the same words before they attacked her.  
  
“I was born into this world to protect my people.” Sonia Nevermind was dressed with a fur draped loosely around her shoulders. She wore a pink dress that circled around her legs like a carnation dyed red. Her blonde hair was done up, and she wore a tiara on her head such a light blue, glassy like color it looked like it was made of ice. She wore gloves that reached all the way up to her upper arm made of fine silk. In between her delicate fingers, she was holding a knife once more. “If I no longer have a people to protect then why was I even born in the first place?”  
  
“I don’t know.” 

 

Sonia’s knife play was perfect. Medaka could tell she had worked her whole life in order to learn to wield a weapon like that, and perform that one person dance with such grace. Sonia for all she talked about being a princess, being chosen, being born out of destiny to the royal family struck Medaka as a normal girl with normal capabilities. 

Which meant she learned to wield a knife like that  because she had no other choice. If anyone was placed under the same tremendous burdens they would be forced to become like that. Medaka realized that and yet, she found it harder and harder to care.  
  
Sonia slammed against the wall, her knife disarmed from her. A lifetime worth of suffering and effort and the perfect princess was dethroned after Medaka watching her for a few minutes.  
  
The same way a drug addicts receptors for dopamine become addled from overuse, Medaka felt her sense of guilt slowly lessening. Why should she have to feel guilty? She was not too strong, they were just too weak.  
  
She was the only one trying. She was trying hard for the sake of everyone. She wanted them to be happy, so if they fought against her, if they did not try, then they must have wanted to be miserable. 

  
Perhaps she had been locked away in a tower, but she was the one locking herself away now. She hated being a princess but clung to it even after she lost her kingdom because it was the only thing that gave her identity now. Were people always this simple? Medaka loomed over Sonia, two fingers moving towards the girl’s eye socket.  
  
“What do you need that eye for anyway? You’re all so blind.” 

 

Not a single one of these talented people knew how to live like an actual human being. Medaka had only one working eye right now, and she felt like she was the only one who could see.  
  
Medaka suddenly noticed a dart flying through the air, and snatched it right out of the air. “I was born only to poison others. If I was just going to slowly poison my mother, why did she even give birth to me?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Were they all going to answer the same question over and over again. Medaka turned her gaze back towards Gundham, and all of the animals that were on his shoulders fled. Tanaka himself was dressed in a cape with a fur collar, and a red scarf wrapped all the way around his shoulders. He had a pawprint in the middle of his forehead and painted scars over both eyes.  
  
He rushed Medaka losing control of himself like a beast. She saw his bandaged hands curled like talons, and his teeth sharp  in the air. Kurokami Medaka smiled. “I’m not going to use martial arts either. Those are noble moves that people came up with. I’m just going to use violence, like a beast would.” 

 

Medaka slammed his head into the ground, then again, then again. She wondered what it would feel like, if someone could crack open her own skull. The feeling of cutting off her brain stem and severing herself from her own thoughts filled her with a strange ectsasy.

“I was born to serve others.I can’t do a single thing for myself, so who did I used to be? Was I my own person when I was born? When did I stop being myself?” Kirumi Tojo asked as she picked a mop up off the ground and wielded it like a bo staff.  
  
Medaka answered in an increasingly bored tone of voice. “I don’t know.”  
  
Kirumi picked up her mop, and Medaka found a broom on the floor of the hospital. The two of them exchanged blows all the way down the hallway, until Medaka struck her hard enough to break the mop in her hands in half.  
  
Kirumi, and Medaka both drew windex at the same time and sprayed. Kirumi flinched but Medaka did not, due to the fact that Kirumi missed and only hit her already damaged eye.  
  
Kirumi drew a feather duster from underneath her apron and threw it in Medaka’s face as a distraction. When Medaka ran after her, she noticed that Kirumi had already wet the whole hallway with her mop before they began fighting. Medaka slid for a few seconds, and then fell and crashed into the ‘caution wet floor’ sign.  
  
She got up again only to notice that there were wires tied all around her from where she had fell. The next moment they were all pulled taut. She felt them tightening around her flesh, cutting her from several different angles. “Somebody has already tried this before. I’m so bored I can feel my sanity dying. It’s not my fault, you’ve ripped off the sanity I have left.”  
  
Medaka tore through the strings. The moment she broke free her fist could not connect with Kirumi because Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko appeared out of nowhere. “I was born to be with the young master. All I want is just to be by his side. That’s all I ever wanted, but why isn’t that enough anymore?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“I was born to take over the Kuzuryuu. So why am I such a weak piece of shit?”  
  
“I don’t know.”

 

 _Why do you all keep dumping your problems on me?_  
  
Pekoyama was dressed in a pure white suit, with bandages wrapped around her breasts. She wore a bright red blindfold over her eyes, and her silver hair in one pony to the side. She held her sword in one hand, and a much smaller sword in the other and attacked with both.

Medaka immediately disarmed her of both. She saw Kuzuryuu in the background, dressed in a pitch black suit, wearing a long scarf and a black hat over his head. One of his eyes was missing just like how one of her eyes had been cut.  
  
“Why are you just watching?” Medaka taunted him.  
  
“Shut up!” He pulled his hand out of his pocket, and drew a black revolver. Medaka moved faster than his finger could flex to pull the trigger. The next moment her mouth was wrapped around the barrel, and her teeth bit down hard. Fuyuhiko hesitated in shock. “Are you fucking nuts?”  
  
“You really are an incompetent Yakuza. You can’t even kill a cute innocent girl like me.” Medaka ripped her head away and the gun out of his hands, and in the next moment plunged her fist as hard as she could into his gut and then twisted it just to make it hurt more.  
  
“These are the Ultimate Despairs that destroyed the world?” Medaka said, sounding like a disappointed mother. Not that she had any frame of reference for how a mother sounded. “If destroying the world is this easy, then why hasn’t someone done it already and made a better one?”  
  
Medaka felt like she was going mad, but she was far too sane to ever be mad. If only her stitched together brain would come apart at the seams slowly. The pleasure of being dismembered. Cut into little bits and pieces. Everybody else was allowed to fall apart but her. They could all lash out in despair, but her. They could all be weak, but she had to be strong. She wanted to know when was it her turn. When. When. When. When could she fall apart?  
  
She was so, so, jealous of the broken toys in front of her because they could break. 

 

Medaka took another step forward but hesitated when Fuyuhiko’s hand caught her ankle. She was surprised the dolls could move on their own with no one puppeteering them. Now? Now they were suddenly going to pretend to have hearts? They were going to think like they had minds of their own when it was most convenient for them?  
  
She felt like she was going more and more crazy.  
She felt like she was becoming more and more sane.  
_Pitying people like this?_ _  
_ _People who only ever tell lies to protect themselves._ _  
_ _Now that’s just crazy talk._  
  
“Kurokami. Stop. Peko didn’t do anything wrong, I’m the dumbass who gave her orders.” Medaka saw Fuyuhiko crying. Why was he crying? She should be the one crying. They were all showing her such a pitiful performance after all. “If it weren’t for me, Peko would just be a normal girl.”  
He should just go back to being a doll. Just continue to exist aimlessly, like a wind-up doll conducting some bad facsimile of humanity.

 

“Why are you crying?”  
  
“We were friends since we were kids damnit! I hated that place! I never wanted to be there! But it was tolerable because she stayed with me for some reason. The yakuza wasn’t my home, Pekoyama was my home.”  
  
If Zenkichi were here and Medaka were in trouble, Zenkichi would cry the same. Sun showers. An unexpected rain while the sun was still shining. Melancholy on a spring day. Medaka was overwhelmed with those feelings.  
  
She finally realized why she herself was so emotional. She could not handle the emotions of others. Not really. They all had so much more experience at life than she did. So she pretended to be oblivious to everything except her own feelings.  
  
Zenkichi’s feelings towards her suddenly became so apparent, as if the air around her leaked out vivid colors in a haze of smog. The feelings of just wanting to be by her side, to give the lonely girl who had no one else a home. The feeling she had stepped all over. Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko were no different from her and Zenkichi, so why was she stomping over them.  
  
Medaka could not see the beautiful garden of flowers that everyone else saw, so she trampled them.  
  
“Don’t look at me like that.” Medaka said taking a step back, and she noticed at that exact same time Gundham threw himself over Sonia. He kept his whole body eclipsed over her like a moon, even though he was useless and could barely move he got forced his useless body to dance around on strings. “Don’t look at me like I might hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”  
  
Then suddenly the projector in her head ran out of film. She heard the film flip around in the air, before the strip was eventually cut and the image that was being projected in front of her burned away into nothing from exposure to the light. 

  
“I just wanted to save people.”

 

🦔

 

When Matsuda Yasuke egained consciousness, he saw fingers so pale and white he thought they might slip right through him. Instead, they were covered by his blood as she moved the needle up and down through his skin.

“Nanami, no...” Yasuke wheezed and felt like he was gurgling blood at the back of his throat as he tried to force words out of his mouth. “Your hands will get dirty.”  
  
“You’re a fool.”  
  
“I’m well aware.”  
  
“You’re aware and yet you continue to say such foolish things with your dirty mouth? My, my, humans are so complex.” Nanami made a face like she was swallowing her nausea. “Someone like you really should just die.” She said that, and yet she was still stitching him up.  
  
“If I talk to you any longer, I might develop feelings for you, so let’s just end this.”  
  
And then Nanami flicked her fingers up and his body got goosebumps from a disgusting feeling. Someone else was stitching him together. This was what it felt like, to be healed by another person. This girl with every sickness in the world was trying to comfort him, even though she planned to die by the end of the next day.  
  
He had been killed.  
He had been killed by a girl whose hands were just like Nanami’s.  
He had been killed, staring into that girl’s eyes.  
Nanami did you know that?  
_Did you know she killed me?_  
  
Matsuda continued to mumble. “Develop feelings… it is too late for me.”  
  
He thought about destroying her. He hesitated, wondering if she should shove this girl off the cliff she was straddling. If she left him alone like this now after healing she would be walking to face Medaka and her own death. But he thought about just destroying her now, destroying her planned ending for herself entirely. If he could break her could anyone fault him for breaking her?  
  
It must feel great.  
To break such a girl.  
To love her the exact same way he had been loved in the past.  
  
Even if she helped him he would not be helped. If she bandaged him, he would not heal. She could reach out, but he would not be touched. He would not be saved. He would not be comforted.  
  
Yet, he wanted to heal her. He forgot about his pain, and could not stop thinking about that. _That’s right I… I didn’t want mom to cry anymore… I wanted to see her pain stop._ That was why. He finally remembered why he studied medicine in the first place. These feelings did not belong to Junko or his mother, they were entirely his own. 

 

 “Nanami, let’s get serious and talk about the future.”  
  
“Future?”  
  
“Yes, I don’t like thinking about the future. It’s nothing but painful,b ut I’m a masochist so let’s do it anyway. While we’re at it, we might as well hope for a bright future.”  
  
“Y-you…”  
  
“You know, Nanami when you get out of this city you have nowhere to go, right? Then you should come to my place. It is a pretty run down apartment, with all white walls, but we can buy paint just for you. The rent is paid for me by my grant. I cannot call it home, but it is a fun place.”  
  
“What, are…”

  
“I have lots of terrible friends that I’m going to introduce you to. There’s this girl called Enoshima Junko, she’s airheaded, self obsessed, and vain but it’s fun to talk to somebody who hates you as much as you hate yourself. There’s this guy named Zenkichi, he’s basically the only person who can keep Medaka somewhat normal. There’s Komaeda, a real weird guy, you can be sick buddies together. Then there’s one person I want you to meet. He has no positive qualities at all, but he’s not so bad. The person I want you to meet the most…”  
  
“What are you saying-”  
  
“He’s got no likable qualities, or good traits, but otherwise he’s not so bad. No matter how much you pushed him away he would want to be friends with someone like you. H-he…. He’s a lot better at this friend thing then I am. I’m a terrible friend to him, but he’s basically the only one I got.”  
  
“W-what are you saying?”  
  
“I was thinking of leaving Hope’s Peak and just opening my own medical clinic. You can be my first patient. I’ll devote everything I have to healing you. Maybe I can only treat the symptoms, but that’s better than doing nothing at all right? I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to cure you and completely fail. But I’ll think it was a good life and I tried my best. All of my friends are assholes who you just want to get stabbed, so they’ll drop by my clinic any time they want. I’ll make sure they all visit your room so you have company. If you die, I’ll leave a flower on your grave every day.”  
  
“I sa-”  
  
“And then with everyone let’s have a good time.”  
  
“What are you saying!” Nanami exploded, her ice cold demeanor shattering into a brilliant tiny little pieces. It was like watching a mirror break, and seeing the reflections of yourself split again, and again, and again, into tiny yous. “Why are you talking about a future I don’t have?”  
  
Being able to think about the future is proof of being alive.  
Nanami the girl who should never have been born, the girl who every moment she lived was agony.  
  
But she lived.  
She was alive.  
The girl in front of me is alive.  
 

Living was too much for Nanami. She suddenly, abruptly, eliminated her emotions, positive and negative, life and death, eliminated everything, and then like a top spinning without interruption she turned everything over into emotionlessness.  
  
“Thank you Matsuda.” 

 

 _She remembered..._  
  
She said with the clarity of being empty.  
Clear like clean water never dirtied by human hands.  
  
“I was able to see a good dream in the end.”  
  
His last ditch attempt to convince her otherwise did not work. A doctor like him who could not even take care of himself, or heal himself in any significant way, for a person like him to heal someone else was ridiculous. 

 

 _In the end she remembered my name._ The way she said his name, was a little bit painful. 

 

🦔

"You did a good job saving them."

 Kamukura appeared slowly clapping. For once he looked like he was enjoying himself.

“Matsuda got stabbed. Aren’t you worried?” Medaka asked.  
  
“I thought I’d send him my love.” Kamukura said, appearing from behind her. 

Kamukura Izuru knew he was nothing special. If you put ultimate power in the hands of a thirteen year old, they would probably try to destroy humanity too. His every action was so tedious, he reacted to those horrible surgeries in a completely normal way. He lost his mind in a boring way. Everybody around him was predictable, but the most predictable person of all was himself.  
  
He was the one who was unable to break his own patterns. He acted like he was a doll on rails, making the same mistakes over and over again. 

  
Hinata Hajime the reserve course student was murdered so he was born. Kamukura Izuru gave up his existence so Hinata Hajime could pretend to be an Ultimate on that island. Hinata Hajime killed himself, but his body continued to live on bearing all of his sins. He kept dying, and dying, and dying, and dying, and every time he died he forgot the person he loved the most.  
  
He had no choice but to keep living.  
How many times did he have to die?  
How many people did he need to kill in order to be born?  
Most people only had to die once.  
  
This was too much, any normal person would crack and he was exceedingly normal.  
  
He was not afraid to die. He was used to that by now. Dying and being reborn over and over again was preferable to dying once and being forgotten. Please, please, don’t forget him. The person he loved the most forgot about him. No matter how many times they met again, he always forgot. Please. He wanted just one person to remember him. Because, Kamukura Izuru could no longer remember who he was anymore.  
  
He wanted to forget himself. Forget his own mediocrity. All he had ever wanted was to be a special person, but no matter how much he sacrificed, or how much he let others do to him he could not be the main character of his own life.  
  
No, the more he let others take advantage of, the less and less important he became. Until he disappeared. He did not exist anymore. He did not exist in anybody’s story. 

 

Yet, he stood there to face the main character.  
  
Kurokami Medaka was special. Her entire life, every adult around her told her she was special. They spoiled her for being special. They hated her for being special. They blamed her for being special.  
  
She was just a little girl.  
  
She had no idea how to deal with the feelings other people constantly pushed onto her. So she decided to accept it. All of their love for her, and all of their hate, until those feelings became nothing to her.  
  
She hid her heart away somewhere no-one could reach her. She locked herself in a casket of flowers because living became simply too much. 

  
  
She decided to happily swallow everything.  
But, there was no bottom to her heart.  
She was just hollow.  
So of course she could accept everything. She did not have to actually hold it. She could love everything without embracing a single thing. 

  
She was lonely, but she was so constantly surrounded by other people that she did not realize she was alone. She did not know she had forgotten about her heart until it was too late. A little girl locked away in a box would be afraid. They would be nothing but afraid. It was dark. And she was buried somewhere. And no one was going to find her. What if even when they died people never left their bodies. What if she was going to spend the rest of eternity as haunting lonely bones. 

  
She loved humans. And yet, not a single “beloved” human face came into her minds eye.  
Not the father who raised her.  
Not the siblings who she looked up to.  
Not the boy she met in middle school who hated her.  
Not the crazy girl obsessed with falling to her own ruin awho was the first to see her true nature.  
So many unfortunate, despairing people she tried to save.  
So many naive fools she tried to save.  
Not even the boy stood on the border between normalcy and ruin, and held out a hand to pull her into his normal world.  
Not a single face came to mind.  
But she still love people.  
Kurokami Medaka, who possessed a view of people that was as blank as the void, turned around to face Kamukura Izuru as he stepped out of the shadows.  
  
It was funny. She never wanted to be a main character. She just wanted to be an important character in someone else’s life. She would give everything to have a supportive role. She tried so hard to throw away her special qualities, but in the end she could not get rid of it. 

 

Once actors started they had no choice but to play their parts to the end. They could not suddenly ask change in the middle of the performance. _Show must go on and all that._ _  
  
_

“Yo.” She said staring face to face.  
  
“What a boring greeting.”  
  
In the end they were both clueless kids. Neither of them knew how to feel real.  
  
Medaka swung at him as hard as she could, but Kamukura dodged. He had no intention to fight her from the start, he ran away and suddenly the power cut in the hospital. The hallways became dark, except for the occasional flickering of light. 

 

She gave chase, even though it felt like trying to outrun her own shadow. No matter how hard she ran, she could hear Kamukura’s heartbeat in her ears. She was chasing after herself so she would never truly catch up to him. He was running away from himself so he would never truly escape him. 

  
Medaka finally cornered him in a room. She expected that Kamukura was luring her here, and wanted to be trapped in this room with her, but stood in the doorway anyway. A strange feeling steeled its way into her.  
  
A familiar feeling. A nostalgiac feeling. An old friend of hers.  
  
“Formaldehyde ...?” She whispered as she recalled something vague in her mind. This particular darkness and the smell in the air were both known to her. Worse, they are familiar. Her bones started to ache, and the trembling started to reach even her mind.  
  
As her eyes started to adjust to the darkness she desperately wished they would not. The room itself is filled with long white sheets, which covered surgery beds which have been rolled into the room. She knew Kamukura was hiding in here, but not a soul made its presence known.  
  
She had not even fought him yet, and Medaka felt like she already lost. Her body was at its limit, as her bones began to creak. As if her whole body was working in opposition to her, begging her not to take not a single step more.  
  
Her eyes finally saw.  
Soemthing that made her wish she could not see.  
  
Bodies.  
Human bodies.  
  
Pekoyama Peko. Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko. Tanaka Gundham. Sonia Nevermind. Kirumi Tojo.   
  
Emukae Mukan.   
  
A grotesque display. Every body is so perfectly preserved it almost looks like art. Not a single one of them looked dead. The only other source of light in the room was the flickering of the television screen as it showed from different channels.   
  
“Like a cheap dime novel horror.” Medaka remarked, quietly with a smile. 

She tried to run away, but at that moment tripped over her own feet like a clumsy girl and fell to the ground. She could only think of one thing, over and over.  
  
Save me. Save me. Save me.  
  
Medaka chuckled. After all, what could she save?  
  
"You killed them Medaka-chan. You copied the talent of the Ultimate Murderous Fiend and you killed them. Because living was such despair for them it was the only way to save them."   
  
“N-no, they’re alive. I made sure they were alive."   
  
“You're lying."   
  
Medaka suddenly grabbed Kamukura by the neck and forced him against the wall. She said nothing, but her eyes repeated over and over again. _Save me. Save me. Save me._

"Are you going to kill me too?" Kamukura asked. 

  
"I don't want to."   
  
“From the moment you met them you couldn’t save them. Whether they lived happily or died on their own, that has nothing to do with you. You just can’t accept that.” 

 _Save me. Save me. Save me._  
  
“What you hate is not other people being hurt, but other people leaving." Kamukura finally smiled. He looked like he was forcing muscles that had fallen into disuse to work to make such a face. “You want to control fate so they can never leave, and look how you act when they don't do what you want.”  
  
“Stop saying that! Stop acting like I’m the enemy!”  
  
“Hey, Medaka-chan who are you protecting right now? You’ve now broken every other player in the game. Who are you still fighting for right now?”   
  
“For myself! I wanted to protect myself!”  
  
Medaka screamed in his face. _Save me. Save me. Save me._ She could not think of anything else. The relentless ticking of her clockwork brain, the multitude of voices in her head crying out for help were all infuriatingly annoying. Irritating. Making her lose concentration. A maddening cacophony forcing her to slip away. She started giggling quietly, privately, but then her smile cracked and it built to the boisterous laugh of a madwoman, reverberating in the empty room filled with two empty people.  
  
“This is ridiculous.” Medaka said, “Right from the start, right from the fucking start, I couldn’t save a single person.” 

“You’re a weird girl, Medaka-chan. So empathic, and yet you don’t understand other people’s emotions at all.” Kamukura reached forward even with her hand on her neck, and touched her face. “Medaka-chan, do you believe people have hearts?”  
  
“Huh…? Do they not?”  
  
“They don’t. They have consciousness, but that’s not a heart.”  
  
“Then, I don’t have a heart! How am I still alive?” Medaka asked obliviously.  
  
“Human emotion is just a function of the brain. Calling it a heart is far too mechanical. For me, the body is nothing special. It’s just there. There’s nothing alive inside of it.”  
  
“Then how are you still alive?” Medaka was as clueless about metaphors as ever. 

“No, I’m saying there’s no such thing as value or weight to life. Do you get it? Nobody’s special. There’s nothing special at all about it. That goes for you and me. Talents change nothing. It’s meaningless and valueless. That’s why it’s fine to do anything.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You think it’s selfish to want something for yourself, so you pretend to only live for other people.”  Kamukura continued to gently smile at her. “But it’s fine, you don’t have to worry about others. They’re irrelevant to you.  You’re free to choose how you live. That’s not selfish. That’s not wrong.”  
  
“But how will I… how will I know?”  
  
“Trust me.” His hand traveled up the side of her face, and his fingers got lost in her hair. He reached forward and patted her on the head. She probably never had been praised like this before. She was already acknowledged as special, so nobody bothered to acknowledge that girl as a person. “I’ll validate everything about you, Medaka-chan.”  
  
Medaka was lost in his mismatched eyes. She had no idea what kind of future he was seeing with those eyes, but he looked like he was staring in two at once. His eyes were seeing a dream she could not possibly comprehend. A dream that was both beautiful and ugly, hopeful and despairing.  
  
At that moment Kamukura remembered the words that had persuaded him so long ago. His voice suddenly grew louder. “You’re a god among insects, Medaka-chan of course you’re lonely the world’s an ant farm! Come with me and we’ll shatter the glass together. We were destined to understand each other! Tell me you don’t feel it!” 

At that moment their performance reached an end.  
Medaka and Kamukura heard an applause from behind them.  
  
“You’re just a rude boy who thinks he’s clever.” Nanami gestured at the corpses around her. “You used the talents of the Ultimate Imposter to dress up a bunch of corpses you found around the city like your friends. That sniper should stop leaving messes for others to clean up, what is he a child?” 

Medaka looked around and immediately realized the deception. It was dark, and she was distressed, so she did not notice right away that all of these bodies were off in height and proportion from the people she had known, only the faces were perfect.  
  
Not only that but Koameda was missing. Kamukura could not bring himself to look at even a fake corpse of the boy he loved.  
  
“Medaka-chan I’ll explain-”  
  
“Too late, I’m unraveling your scheme. You spun too many plans and got caught in your own web.” Nanami said, as she cut him off. “Medaka-chan, the game master is me. I approached you knowing you would protect me, and therefore become the enemy of everybody else cutting your ties with all of them.”  
  
“B-but why? I just wanted to help you, Nanami.”  
  
“But I want to die.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The only thing I’ve ever wanted was to never be born in the first place. But I can’t fix that, so all I can do is die.”  
  
Nanami smiled at her.  
It was sickeningly sweet.  
  
“If you want to save me, then that makes you my enemy.”   
  
And just like that Kurokami Medaka had no friends, and only enemies.   
And never had she felt more alone. 


	38. The Real Feeling is Long Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening is a quote by Richard Siken.

 

Let’s say you’ve swallowed a bad thing and now it’s got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure.

 

🦔

  
Nanami did not laugh.  
She only gave a tired sigh.  
She coughed like she was trying to vomit up something terrible from her throat.  
  
Green.  
Green.  
Green.  
  
She filled the air with green, like poisonous, fuming smoke slowly spreading, like a toxic cloud encroaching on them all. Bacteria which continued to divide, and divide and divide.  
  
Amami Nanami.  
The strongest being that the world knows. A decaying corpse. Oozing, festering, her tattered clothing mingling with flesh hanging off of her bones. She was that kind of corpse.  
  
At any moment her arm might break off. A leg, or a torso, or a head. She was a corpse held together by the thinnest of strings that desperately wanted to break. But she was indifferent, because no matter how many times the strings broke she would be stitched together again.  
  
The raggedy doll was reassembled, its legs, its torso, its head, its arms all sewed back together. And it just kept happening over and over and over. That was what it meant to be alive, that was what it meant to be dead. Half of her body was rotting away, and half of her body was healing, and those halves were tearing her apart. 

 

A girl with half of her body, half of her face, burned off.  
A corpse - not allowed to die.  
A girl - not allowed to live. 

Giving off the stench of corruption, and dragging one leg behind her.  
  
More zombie-like than the zombies.  
More corpse-like than the corpses.  
More alive, and more dead than anyone else.  
Feeling more pain, and lacking more feeling than anyone else.  


  
Medaka did not want to hear this.  
This was too sad a soliloquy.  
Too painful.  
To share with her.

A girl who did not understand Nanami.  
Or her pain.  


That horrible noise like her internal organs crying out, all of the insects inside of her already feasting on her dead flesh while she was still alive, all chittering, and chirping at once.  
  
Unlike Kumagawa Misogi, she did not, could not laugh. 

No matter how much pain she endured, her face remained as still as a funeral mask not showing any of it. 

 

Half her body burned alive -  
Even having failed to die, even having failed to live.  
Even as a potential suicide, even as a faied suicide.  
Every inch of her a monster, the bride of frankenstein brought to life.  
Medaka thought she had never seen a more beautiful flower than this one. 

 

A little girl resting in a field of flowers. Naked, except for her long green hair which fell over her body. The flowers grew amongst her hair, entwining and wrapping around the strands. She laid as still and peaceful as the earth, and few butterflies fluttered around her. They mistook her for a flower and landed at her. At that time, looking from behind the cloudy milky-white eyes of a corpse that girl’s eyes welled up and she was finally able to cry. She cried for the butterflies, because nobody understood how painful it was. The cycle of death and rebirth that everyone else considered beautiful. She cried for their sake, because if she cried for her own the tears would not come.  
  
Nanami remembered the first time she killed someone. A man she did not know had snuck into her hospital room. She snuck behind him and gave as great a swing as she could give.  
  
A crack. Then a dull thud as he fell flat oneot the ground in front of her. That was what it was like to have your strings cut. That was what it was like to be a broken puppet. There were flowers growing in his head, red flowers that escaped from the crack in his head and continued to spread everywhere, blooming like crazy. She stared at him silently but he did not move.  
  
“What?”

She only smacked him once, but it was pretty much an instant death. Her only genuine remark was repeating it a second time. “What?”  
  
She had no intent to kill him. It was an accident, but it was a murder surely. But that was not what was bothering her. Her response sounded almost disappointed. “I never knew…” ...What? That humans were so fragile and that they could die simply and easily?  
  
When she was younger her mother once tried to smother her with a pillow to put her out of her misery. It was the only time she ever felt the warmth of her mother’s hands on her body, otherwise the woman could not bring herself to touch her sick child. The only kindness her mother was capable of showing her.  She survived by breaking every one of her mother’s fingers. She was too strong to die then.  
  
There were plenty of people much healthier than her who died so easily. Then, why was she unable to die? This man was older than her, taller, stronger, and far more violent so why did she overpower him so easily? It was not even remotely fair. Was she just unlucky? Or was that man too lucky, getting to die so easily.  
  
She didn’t know.  
She didn’t know anymore.  
She didn’t know.  
She didn’t know anything. She just felt jealous of the corpse in front of her.  
  
A person so easily able to die, and here she was still alive. That man had all of his illnesses cured by his death, but she was still sick. 

 

Oh that was right she needed to hide the corpse. With no hesitation at all, she reached forward and plucked out one of his eyeballs, and then the other. Her finger’s pried apart his ribs, and she looked to see what was inside. She started to disassemble him, piece by piece, with no hesitation or fear at all. What she found dirty was other people after all. A corpse was nod dirty because it ceased to be a person. Her dedication to pulling him apart had an insane focus.  
  
That day she received another unexpected visitor. It was that woman who always hung off her older brother’s arms. Only when she saw someone else looking at her, up to her elbow’s in someone else’s corpse did Nanami realize she had done something wrong. She was like a child who simply hurt someone else without thinking.  
  
All she could do was shiver like a pathetic lunatic. 

 _I’ve killed someone._ _  
_ _I can’t even hide the act._ _  
_ _I’ve killed someone._ _  
_ _Big brother wants an innocent girl to take care of, not a killer._ In chaos and confusion with no easy exit in sight, that was the way her life continued.  
  
“Why were you doing that?”  
  
The woman with blue hair asked her.  
  
“Butterfly dissection.”  
  
“Huh?”

  
“I wanted to understand what the difference was between him and myself. But it was wrong.”  
  
“Why?” The girl with the blue hair touched a hand to the bloodsoaked body on the floor, and then left bloody trails on Nanami’s face. “You’re not a part of that world. So why should that world’s rules apply to you?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t have anything inside of me, and there’s nothing I can do on my own. It’s best to be polite and follow the rules with everyone else.”  Her voice a whisper. Now that she thought about it, why didn’t she think anything was wrong with this? How easily she was able to kill someone. How little remorse she felt. It could not have been a random stranger, maybe next time it would be her brother instead. If this one life left her so easily, then all life must mean nothing to her. What told her to feel nothing about it? “Doesn’t everybody else conclude things with such empty reasoning too?”  
  
“No, you’re special. You don’t think the way others do. You’re far more aware of yourself than others will ever be.”  
  
“I don’t? I am?” This is the first time she realized it. She might have never known if it was not pointed out to her.  
  
“Yes, You can’t think the way others do. No, you can’t even understand their thoughts. That’s why the things that hold meaning for them should have no sway over you. You can do whatever you want.”  
  
“I’m not normal… different,” Nanami mumbled.  
  
“You are. And if you are as broken as you claim, then you can only stand to profit by breaking completely.” 

For a moment Nanami understood why her brother loved this woman to death. Because she met her, like some sort of fateful encounter that was always meant to happen Nanami finally understood what she wanted.  
  
That insrutable girl. That unreadable book. 

 

“Poor thing,” Nanami said as she regarded Medaka. “Treated like a deity in a place like this. Almost like me.” Almost. She said.There was a clear difference, the difference between wellness and sickness, between medicine and poison.  
  
“Why do we have to fight?”  
  
“Medaka-chan don’t waste my time. You’re boring the audience. This stare down will get us nowhere.”  
  
“You’re always looking down at me like that. Like I don’t know a thing. I don’t want to fight you, what’s worng with thinking that way?”  
  
“I said you’re my enemy. I was being serious. Come at me to kill.”  
  
“I don’t want to.”  
  
Nnami sighed in disappointment once more. She really did look like an older sister, one who could crush you with the smallest gestures. “Honestly, I’ve worried from the beginning this might happen. You’re much too soft. Who’s fault is it, I wonder?” 

 

“I don’t have a reason to fight you.”  
  
Nanami’s smile, like a sickness spread and infected her entire face. “Then, if I give you a reason will you fight? Is there a difference between killing each other meaninglessly and killing each other with meaning? Hmm, maybe it has to do with motivation to get you into character.”  
  
It was her planned climax at the end of her life after all. Nanami had been writing this script all of her life, because she knew the only page she was ever truly going to be able to write was the last page, the ending, so she procrastinated upon writing out her death to truly make it count. She wanted it to be special. She wanted all parties involved to have fun. 

  
Nanami threw something.  
Medaka held her hands out to catch it on instinct.  
Plop. 

Something heavy, and wet landed in Medaka’s hands. A human head. This one was unmistakably real, it was a head she could never forget because it looked so much like her own. The head of Kurokami Maguro, her brother staring back at her lifelessly. She made eye contact and knew the look in his eyes she saw would never leave her alone for the rest of her life. 

 

“Kamukura-kun, I’m disappointed. I feel like scolding you. You were trying so hard to break Medaka-chan, but you didn’t even use what would hurt her the most. Did you take pity on her?”  
  
Kamukura’s mouth was a fine line that still did not waver even a little. “No, I’m just half assed as usual.” 

 

“If I said I killed them all would that be reason enough?”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Why? I’m a monstrous person with nothing inside. Or, maybe I have a grudge against your family. Maybe I was locked away in a room all of my life. Maybe I was born with an insatiable thirst for blood. Maybe your family treated my family like a slave. Maybe someone threatened to kill my precious brother if I didn’t. Maybe I was jealous of you, who was just as talented as I was but has a healthy body.”  
  
Nanami’s smile disappeared. “Maybe I was trying to make you happy. Isn’t this what you wanted? For everything special about you to be stripped away so you could just be a normal girl? Well this is what having nothing feels like.”  
  
“What...”  
  
“You can pick any reason you like, but here’s what I think. Even now you sympathize with me, even now you want to forgive me.”  
  
“What’s wrong with that?”  
  
“You’re so messed up. You really worry me sometimes.” Nanami said, her monotone not breaking as usual. “Well, I wasn’t the one who killed your brother. That was Matsuda-kun, and he didn’t tell you. He’s your enemy too. Everyone here is your enemy, can you still continue to love them?” 

  
The question hung in the air like a noose waiting for Medaka to step up on a chair, and rest her chin on.  
  
As she turned around to leave Kamukura stood up. “Since you can only ever give a half effort in things, I’ll go easy on you and only use one finger.” 

 

Kamukura attacked her from behind. He did not even see her limbs move. For a moment he was weightless, and then vertigo set in as her world inverted and he slammed into the ground. Nanami raised her broken leg and put it on his chest.  
  
“There’s no way that was one finger.” Kamukura complained, petty.  
  
“You hear me wrong. I said I said I’d use everything except my one finger.”  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
“Huh? Aren’t we fighting? Did you get so bored you stopped paying attention?” Nanami tilted her head cutely to the side.  
  
“Don’t play dumb.”  
  
“I guess that’s the one talent I could never surpass you in.”  
  
“You can’t challenge Kurokami and I at the same time. You don’t have the stamina to go more than one round in a fight, your body is still a weakness.”  
  
“Oh, you’re so considerate. How kind of you. I didn’t mean to worry you.” She grabbed the fabric of her kimono and pulled it off of her shoulder, until her entire naked chest was exposed. Kamukura’s attention was immediately drawn to the pronounced veins underneath her skin, dyed a deep purple. Her eyes were bloodshot. It was the exact condition he had seen Munakata in earlier. Seiko Kimura’s drugs. “Ah, anyway. I’m going to take Matsuda-kun hostage. If you don’t come to kill me by tomorrow, I might get bored and kill him.”  
  
Nanami walked to the hallway where Matsuda was already waiting for her. He immediately snapped, “What the hell! Put your kimono back on? Do you think before you do anything? Even once? In your whole life?” 

  
She kicked his leg out from under him forcing him to his knees, and then immediately grabbed him by the hair antennae.  
  
“What the hell! I’m not going to be your damsel in distress! I don’t want to be saved by either one of those assholes? Hey, cut it out! I’m serious okay!”  
  
The only thing both Medaka and Kamukura heard in that moment was the sound of Matsuda’s complaints slowly fading away. “Don’t touch a guy’s hair antennae without permission okay? It’s sensitive!” 

 

🦔

  
Neither of them could talk.  
Their frozen sighs were the only noises in the air. Kurokami Medaka and Kamukura Izuru had nothing to talk about, and sat back to back not looking at each other. They both felt their heartbeats slowly dying and their bodies succumbing to stillness.  
  
They felt like if they stayed together any longer, the two of them might freeze to death and be mistaken for young lovers tragically caught in the snow together.  
  
In their hearts they were holding onto the same memories.  
Of a boy who’s eyes were an endless grey veil.  
Of a boy who’s eyes were a blue ever expanding until they covered the whole sky.  
All of the dear and treasured memories with that precious memories.  
Were fading away.  
As fragile as butterfly’s wings, and as easily torn apart.  
Even the memory of a boy who melted like snow. The memory of a boy next to him whose presence as so quiet, and yet so constant, it was like the wind continuously whispering to him.  
  
The guy whose every touch on her skin filled her with so much sensation it was like lighting that patch of skin on fire, and letting it continue so she could feel the burn for a few seconds longer. The boy who sat ablaze in orange light.  
  
Beside her he would smile.  
Beside him he would smile.  
And that would be enough.  
  
He walked along the sunlight with her.  
He walked along the moonlight with him.  
  
Her own personal sun in the sky that shone just for her.  
His own personal moon in the sky that reflected only him.  
  
There was a time where they could spend every day together, but now every memory of them just reminded both the girl and the boy of how alone they were. The two of them felt like bitter exes with each other. The real feeling is long gone. That was the atmosphere between them.  
  
“Why do you hate me so much?” Medaka finally asked, like bluntly bludgeoning Kamukura’s skull.  
  
“I don’t hate you.”  
  
“You tried to break my mind, and then manipulate me into believing only you.”  
  
“Oh, I do that to all of my friends.”  
  
“You’re not a very good friend.” 

The two of them stared silently at each other for a full minute. The protagonist and antagonist both had their script stolen, and now it was just awkward and the two of them were both bad at improvising.  
  
Medaka finally muttered again, because unlike Kamukura she could not stand silence. “I’m not the spoiled one, you are.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“You were normal. You could try your best at something. When you failed, you could cry and your parents would comfort you. It was okay for you to get frustrated. It was okay for you to give up. Do you know how many people here, those same talented people that you envy so much would give anything to have the normal life that you did?”  
  
“I didn’t know they wanted to be bored so badly.”  
  
“Y-you, stop joking around! I’m not laughing.”  
  
“That’s because you never get the joke.”  
  
“You’re just an entitled brat who didn’t even try.”  
  
Kamukura sighed as if disappointed. “There you go with the not trying again. Matsuda is right, you don’t listen at all.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your attempts to break my mind.”  
  
“Just because I was trying to hurt you with those words doesn’t mean they weren’t correct.” Kamukura wanted to be distant. There was no emotion in his voice at all, his voice, his words, all dead. A deadpan existence.  
  
“I’m insecure just like you! I’m always thinking. Was there a better way? Did I really do anything to help them? Did I really think of every possibility? Did I belittle someone’s suffering? I don’t know if I’m right, I don’t know a single thing, but unlike you at least I try to be right!”  
  
“Oh, you’re so convinced of the idea that you’re a good person it’s almost amusing.” Only almost. Kamukura would never admit to enjoying anything. “If you’re trying to be right doesn’t that mean you think you’re right? More right than others?” 

“You’re just twisting my words.”  
  
“See, you’re not listening again, because nobody but you can be right.”  
  
“Whatever, if I said I was right you’d say your left just to disagree with me.”  
  
Kumagawa was the contrarian not him. “You think you know better about a person’s pain then they do themselves. You’re like a doctor who misses a diagnosis of cancer because they ignored their pain and told them to eat more vegetables.” 

  
“Well, eating vegetables healthy!” 

Kamukura continued. “You want to fix people, to prove that you’re a good person. Because if you show everybody around you what a good person you are all the time, they won’t leave you alone.”

“I’m not wrong. Wanting to help others isn’t wrong.”  
  
“You think everyone should be good and react in the right way. You get mad at broken people for being broken. And now look at you, you finally have to struggle with trauma and try like everybody else and you’re throwing a tantrum.”  
  
“You’re the brat who refuses to work with me because they don’t feel special when I’m around.” 

  
Kamukura smiled. Oh, she actually did have some teeth. He thought she was a lioness with all of her teeth ripped out, desperately trying to kill with only her gums. He thought of a well crafted reply, but then Hinata’s voice just slipped out. “No, you!”   
  
“How hard is it for you just being a little bored? You don’t put any effort in, you just go _it’s boring_ and give up immediately. Well of course you’re bored if you stick your nose up at everything!”  
  
“I…. tried… I tried, to live, and I kept dying.”  
  
He forgot what the shape of his body looked like. He forgot what form he was supposed to take.  
  
It did not seem too important. In the moment everything went black, and he felt his naked body being painted over with a layer of tar that stuck to his skin. He is who he is. He has only had one body his entire life, and he’s looked in the mirror several times and failed to be impressed.  
  
Tanned skin, broad shoulders and a large torso that angled down into a much thinner waist. A big chest that rose and fell with steady motions when he breathed. A curved collarbone, with muscles that pulled tight and obvious under it when he got angry. A collarbone that dipped into the lines of his breast. A stomach, flat and hard to the touch. Thighs that were lean and well muscled on either side. What the lines of his hips dipped down into, and what fell between his thighs hung out when he stood in front of the mirror without a stitch of clothing on. When his his memories started to fade, he would stand in front of the mirror for long periods at a time and try to memorize the shape of his body, even though he never liked what he saw.  
  
But then it’s gone, his entire body shattered, and scattered as easily as glass. His eyes are open, but he sees nothing but black, and then the tar seeps in through the corner of his eyes, and drip, drip, drip, he can feel it dripping slowly into his brain. He doesn’t know what is happening to him, or even how he can still exist like this.  
  
When he reaches out everything slips away from him. He has no idea who he is, just that he’s vague, and broken, and he’s distinctly aware that somehow he can get more broken, that this pain can get worse. He has no idea if he’s conscious, if he can breathe in this tar, because it feels like he has swallowed something awful inside of him and painted his insides in that same terrible color. He sees flashes of black, and then flashes of white, and those white shapes are labcoats and he is terrified of them. They were fixing him. They might fix him a little more. They kept fixing him over, and over, and over again.  
  
He had no face, and no hands, and all that he could define himself now was by a familiar sense of pain. A dull, constant pain, as if he is feeling every single nerve ending fry, and pop, and explode, and die one by one. He was scared of forgetting. Who he was. The people who cared about him.  
  
If he forgot he would never see another person smile at him again. If he forgot no one would need him anymore. He knew what the void felt like and it was this place where he just kept floating and passing through things unable to touch a single thing, and he desperately wanted to return to his own body. He wanted to have a body, and a mind, and a name of his own.  
  
There is nowhere to go, nothing do no, and no way for him to overcome this.He wondered if toys felt this agony and helplessness when they were played with. Everything about him has been cut away to a scalplel, and he has been stripped down and is lying there naked and embarrassed that his bones are showing. All he has are fragments, but when he tries to reach out of them, he slices his fingers open on the glass, and bleeds, and bleeds, and that bleeding reality makes every single color in the world a vague blur that mixed together.  
  
Staying still is slowly sinking into a dark ocean.  
And that’s what he wants.  
He sinks to the bottom, smiling.  
  
Did corpses left behind by murder victims feel this way? Did they wonder who would find the body they had left behind now that they no longer needed it. 

Hinata Hajime drowned. Kamukura Izuru, his black hair thick, falling over his face, looked like a corpse that had been dragged back up to the surface. He finished his explanation to Medaka.  
  
“Do you think it would have been better if you died two years ago? For example on the operating table. For example when Enoshima tried to kill you. Do you not think you would have been happy if you’d died then?”  
  
Medaka looked like she was having fun. Her people really was awful, she was just pushy and rude. Even if she was a completely normal girl with no talents, Hinata did not think they would get along.  
  
“Are you feeling depressed because you killed your past self?”  
  
Kamukura frowned, which was the second expression he made this conversation.  
  
“Well from the way you act, you’re inner child is just fine, because you’re still just a stupid brat.”  
  
“The same for you. You don’t have to be worried about being treated as special, because your problems are so utterly uninteresting and you’re just as self absorbed as everyone else.”  
  
Kamukura had no idea how she was provoking him. There was only one person who he met in the past who made him actually want to retort when he was insulted. Even with Junko, he was able to just tune out everything she said. He could hear Kumagawa’s laughter in his ears.

"There's a chance we could cheat to win."  
  
"That's no good. Games are no fun when nobody follows the rules."   
  
"You're right letting everyone die and doing nothing is clearly the better option." Kamukura barely hid his disdain behind his masklike face anymore. "If we can defeat Nanami, but keep her alive and restrained until the last minute. They probably won't trigger the poison that kills everyone. Killing games are like that, they wouldn't end early, it's boring that way."  
  
"Then, why didn't you say so before-"  
  
"There was a one percent chance that I could be wrong. And everyone, because of me..." 

"All of those friends you treated like toys to throw at me?"

Kamukura retorted, “All of those friends, they want the other guy not me.”  
  
“But do you like them?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’re so smart you can answer whether you like them or not.”  
  
“Fuyuhiko’s got an inferiority complex the size of a skyscraper, and yet somehow, even though he’s insecure about everything he still thinks he can boss me around. Pekoyama doesn’t tell you a single thing that’s wrong, and then obviously resents the hell out of you for not noticing, because she wants to be some quiet tragic little prince. ” All at once Hinata’s voice started to slip out again.  
  
“Gundham won’t ever shut up even though he has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s always going on about how he hates people, like buddy you’re not that likable yourself. Sonia’s condescending to everyone and you can tell she’s only being nice because clearly she thinks she’s better than you. She feels sorry that everyone’s not as wonderful and kind of a person as she is. And oh my god, they both think I’m too stupid to notice the forbidden action on Sonia’s arm, and want to act out their shitty tragic love instead of just asking for help.”  
  
Hinata’s voice just kept pouring out. Kamukura never thought he had this much inside of him, not enough to overflow. “And oh my god Mikan, I’m almost glad she’s following Emukae around because it’s such a pain in the ass to clean up after her messes every five seconds, especially when you know she’s just doing it on purpose for the attention. I want to be useful, I want to be useful, then maybe try being useful for once!” 

Hinata finished speaking, if that was acting then he had done quite a bit of acting. He exhaled and then averted his eyes, face red. “But yeah, I like em I guess…”  
“Actually, are you sure you don’t hate them?”  
  
“Silence. Just give me peace and quiet for one moment. Y-you, still…” Hinata awkwardly forced the words out. “You still like Zenkichi too, so all of the stuff that’s wrong right now, it’s not a big deal.”  
  
“You’re not good at talking about your feelings.”  
  
“I don’t have any.”  
  
“Do I… Do I not have any?” Medaka asked him, and he knew how easy it would be to push the girl who was already on the edge of the cliff off. She wanted so badly to know what it was like to be broken. “Is that why I’m not sad about my family?”  
  
“You’re angry, aren’t you?”  
  
“Huh?” Medaka smiled at him, empty.  
  
“That’s what I thought on the island. That’s why I always avoided you. Even though you were always smiling, it was like you were angry.” Hinata scratched at his head, his fingers getting lost in his hair. “I always thought I was the exact kind of pathetic person you were angry at. That if somebody on the island ever killed me, it would be you.”  
  
“I…”  
  
Medaka’s eyes flitted away.  
Open and closed.  
Like butterfly’s wings.  
Her fingers trying to close around a dream, as they weaved invisible threads in the empty air.  
  
“I guess so. I might be unusually angry.” 

She had been repressing it all this time, and only one person saw. She did not want to be angry. She wanted to be kind, sympathetic to others. A good person was never angry.  
  
“You can’t cry because you’re too angry right now. Well, for me it’s the opposite usually I get so pissed off I start crying, and it totally ruins my attempt to look tough.” Hinata said bashfully.  
  
“I… I don’t want to get angry, and kill Nanami.”   
  
Hinata reached forward. He saw all the butterflies that had landed on the girl mistaking her for something already dead, lying half rotten in a garden and brushed them away with his fingertips. “Then, I’ll be the one person you can’t forgive. I’ll be the one person you want to kill. All of your urges to kill Nanami, all of your hatred for her, direct it at me instead.”  
  
He looked at her with two different eyes. As if two different boys were observing her. He watched her from behind eyes so mismatched it was impossible to believe they belonged to the same person. It was like a sheep and a cat sewn sloppily together.   
  
"I'm sorry," Kamukura said.   
  
"I don't forgive you."   
  
"I want to protect you."   
  
"I want to kill you." 

_Oh. I'm so angry. So angry._


	39. Human Failure

Nanami stared at the hospital door. The glass within was shattered, the door once pure white, had long since faded into a dull gray.  
  
Before it was abandoned, this hospital had a garden. She looked at the blurred images of flowers through the glass. On the other side of the door she could hear the sound of children laughing.  
  
A beautiful, beautiful garden once was once there. Beyond a maze of thorns, there was a place wrapped in the smell of green. A place untouched by the sun, where she found herself in the company of him. A garden where it was impossible to be alone, because he was there. 

 

An alluring air of beauty, almost like something out of a fairy tale. The flowers around them of every single color, a different color for every single human emotion. The days that they played in the flowers, they, newly blossoming, believed they still had a future ahead of them.  
  
A pale girl stood among the crimson flowers, her eyes as red as the roses. She carefully plucked petal, little blossoms of pink and red, and gathered them up in her hands. A boy slept under the tree, the noises he made were like the stirring of the branches in the wind. The girl dropped the petals over his face.  
  
_“Lazy boy. I’ll give you a thrashing.”_

 

He woke up, the long lashes of his eyes brushing against the petals. 

 

_“It’s not nice to wake up others.”_

 

 _“It’s your fault, I tried to get your attention.  I know it’s hard for a fool like you to pay attention, but the next time you fall asleep before you know it we’ll both be adults.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Nobody said we can’t play together as grown ups. It’ll be fine.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Someone like you will never grow up properly, will they?”_

 

 _“Please don’t pout, my little lady. How about this? To make it up to you I’ll play whatever you want today.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I want to play make believe. I will be princess taken captive, and you will be my valiant knight. And then you pretend to be a prince when you rescue me.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“You can pretend to be a prince?”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Someone as incompetent as you will never become a real prince, but you can pretend for my sake at least. Besides… no one else can be my prince, or my knight.”_ _  
_ _“Alright then, you’re my princess.”_ _  
  
_

When she cut her finger on one of the roses and the bleeding would not stop, she started to cry. She felt like she had ruined everything. Het tied all the flowers together and placed them on top of her head and reminded her. That despite her pain, there were still beautiful things to look at with her teary eyes.  
  
It was not the colors of the flowers, he was the one that gave color to the garden. The garden smelled of green, it smelled of him. 

  
_Soon, all of the dear and treasured memories, will become wilted flowers, weak, and soon to fade._ _  
_ _  
_ _Even the memory of rain,_ _  
_ _Of the color he provided for her in front of an endless gray veil._ _  
_ _Even the memory of sun,_ _  
_ _Of a cold white room, set ablaze by his presence._ _  
_ _Even the memory of snow: Of the white night where he held her on his back, and promised to show her a field of flowers as soon as the winter ended._

 

 _Beside me you would smile, and that would be enough._ _  
_ _A hand was enough to cross the rift between us,_

 

 _Once,  just for a single moment of time, we were like budding roses dreaming of the future._ _  
_ _A warm light shined at us in the distance_ _  
_ _. We thought it would never go away, and we could bloom slowly._ _  
_ _And there, as you laughed, you told me not to worry, because we’d stand in the flowers again._ _  
_ _  
_ _Someday._ _  
_ _Together._

  
Unable to return to the garden, just staring at it made her want to burn up what she saw in front of her. She held herself back, drawing her hand back into the sleeve of her kimono. Her eyes turned sharply, like she was suddenly drawing a knife at Matsuda behind her.  
  
“Yeah, um. You forgot to do the whole ‘tie me up’ thing so now things are awkward. You’re making me feel like a mouthy idiot with no social skills, instead of an incredibly sexy genius neurologist.”  
  
“I figured restraints were unnecessary, you-”  
  
“If you say that _I already restrain myself too much,_ then I’m going to dissect you.” 

“You just sit around and complain when things get hard.”  
  
“I do other things too! I make things worse for myself!” 

 

“You know for a mad genius, I have yet to see much of the genius. Tell me, do you always try to impress girls by acting like such a fool in front of them? No wonder your first love hated you so much.”  
  
“Keep going, you’ll see plenty of the mad!”

 

“Oooh, scary man. I think my father warned me about boys like you.”  
  
“Yeah, he said watch out for those idiots.”  
  
“You know insulting yourself this much is taking the fun out of insulting you.”  
  
“Well, I would hate it if my kidnapper wasn’t having any fun.”  
  
Matsuda was easy to talk to, because ultimately they were the same type of person. They rejected everyone before they could be rejected. They were detached from humanity. Their mutual goal was to be alone. As she thought of the circumstances that could have driven him to that point, Nanami’s lip twitched threatening a smile.  
  
She was surprised Yasuke had been fatally wounded once before this. There was nobody he should have ever let close enough to touch his rib, and with those same fingers, slice it apart. The thought that it had been someone else other than her to fatally wound him made her heart murmur in jealousy.  
  
“So, what are you gonna do, Nanami?”  


He asked her, and their playful banter came to an end, and everything was ruined. A question so clear and straightforward did not suit either of them.  
  
“You have to know none of our interactions were real. I know exactly the kind of girl you like.”  
  
Everything was a lie, and everything was fake.  
That she cried in front of him.  
That she wanted him to stop her.  
That she wanted him to follow her.  
That she wanted his help.  
By doing, and smiling, that too.  
She acted just the type of girl that Matsuda liked. 

“Because you know, other people, it doesn’t heal at all it just hurts.” She tried to force herself to smile innocently, but what came out spread on her face like a rash, the sick smile was all she was capable of. “This is why I hate doctors, because they say it’s gonna heal but it just hurts.”  
  
“...Is dying alone, lonely?”  
  
“It’s lonely,” Nanami suddenly answered. “It’s lonely but I’ll die alone.”  
  
“I see… I see.”  
  
And then, Nanami flickered. Her entire existence a weak burning flame. She felt like the first time they had met, Matsuda almost killed her with stupid worsd.  
  
She had been killed.  
That time, just from having met him for the first time.  
And this time, she was going to be killed again.  


“Being locked away in a room your entire life, and then dying alone the moment you step outside, that’s a lonely story don’t you think?” A voice spoke up between the two of them. “I think it’s boring when stories end that way.  
  
And, Nanami whipped her head around like her neck was broken.  
Because that girl had eluded her senses.  
And in front of her-  
  
A deeply scarred scarlet that never faded.  
Crimson like a hemophiliac wound that bled, and bled, and bled. 

  
Kurokami Medaka smiled a cynical smile.  
A smile stolen from the boy she once met in middle school.  


  
🦔

 

Kurokami Medaka’s beauty was a persistent thing. Even if her were flesh were burnt until it turned pitch black and shrunk, her burned up form would still look beautiful. Her hair had grown a little longer, was uncombed, she wore a red dress completely torn apart, smaller broken threads and strings fell from her everywhere like she was bleeding. And it is precisely that beauty which makes Nanami forget to breathe for a moment.  
  
Even as haphazardly torn apart as she was, her whole body had the air of a controlled mess, of this was exactly what she intended to look like. The same could not be said of her left eye, from which fresh blood emerged red and whole. She reopened the wound from a razor blade that had sliced that eye apart.  
  
“You truly are the best.” Nanami gave a vaguely amused smile.”A perfect monster.” The small trame of her body trembled and threatened to break, how pathetic, she was in a play acting and the acting’s not up to snuff. She was going to go home sick and be replaced by an understudy soon.  
  
“You two were so late because you had to do a fucking costume change?” Yasuke complained, feeling left out of the scene entirely. 

 

“I told her it was an unnecessarily tedious waste of our time,” Kamukura said, the only thing distinguishing him from the shadow were his two mismatched eyes.  
  
“This is why you can never be as good Enoshima, senpai! You don’t have a sense of style. Square root of negative one style points.”  
  
“Black suits are considered stylish,” Kamukura said sheepishly, even though he currently was wearing a green jacket over his which had probably been retrieved from a dumpster somewhere.  
  
Medaka was red, red, red. Her face, her ears, her eyes all turned red in anger. It seemed she finally understood how to joke just a little bit, as bitterness and cynicism dripped off of her tongue like acid.  
  
Corrosive, eating everything up, she seemed to consume everything like flames. There had always been red inside of her. Underneath that carefree smile there were emotions deeper, darker, charred, like burnt skin she kept hidden. Her entire life she had been afraid to let those flames out, scared of who she might burn.  
  
This is the image of love painted in red.  
This is the image of love destroyed, a deeper, redder, red.  
Red.  
Red.  
Red.  
  
Nanami’s green, burned up by red. Paint smeared over paint, that was all this was, until the vibrancy of one paint choked out all color from the other. Painting it all over in red until the entire image was destroyed.  
  
Nanami was not just failing to perform, the entire stage was lit on fire by Medaka. The difference between them, life and death, sun and moon, all things never meant to touch.  
  


“I like you looking like that, we finally look the same. You and I no matter what we do will never stop being special.”  
  
“No way we can be mirror images, because you’re so fucking ugly you went and broke that damn mirror.”  
  
Medaka did not laugh, she shouted. Extremely, intensely angry. “AHhh? If you die alone everything went well? That’s your grand plan? You start it and then end it and are you kidding me? That idiotic play is stupid. You can’t be the same as me, you’re not even in my league.”  
  
“Oh, I like this color on you.”  
  
“Don’t play mysterious and coy, you don’t get to do that when everything’s already been revealed. You’re not as hard to understand as you think you are, all you little traumatized brats are so see through it’s painful.”  


“Hm.”  
  
“You set all of this up so I would catch you in the end. The hell are you? Some little kid that wants to get lectured by an adult because they feel guilty? Don’t get me involved in such a boring and ordinary problems, if you want to hate yourself go slit your wrists on your own time, if you want to die so badly go hang yourself alone in your own room. You’re just cutting everything and running, you’re just pushing away anybody who could possibly be tied to you.”  
  
“What wonderful advice you’ve given me. I’ll turn my life around right now.”  
  
“Fall into despair. You fucking brat. You pissed me off, you fucking brat.”  
And then, in a kind way Medaka smiled. And then. “And, don’t worry. You and I, there’s no way we can be cut apart.”

 

All of Medaka’s anger.  
No, the entire rest of the world, could not reach the girl locked away in her white hospital room.  
Nanami smiled, in an unkind way. “If the string won’t break then I’ll just sever your hand.” She swiped her hand through the air, and Medaka saw a glint of silver from what Nanami had thrown and then her own hand severed, wrist it was attached too. It broke away from her as easier as a limb falling off of a doll, and she saw her bangle as well fall off her stump of a hand. “There, now you and your friend match.” Nanami said, trying to be cute.  
  
Kamukura go.  
Medakaa said in a much quieter voice as she rushed Nanami.  
She felt the same as fighting Kumagawa, the weakest fighting the strongest.  
It was just one person bullying another. 

She should have never fought him, because he wanted to get hurt by her, he wanted to break himself on her fists. She should have known better than to be violent with a person who only knew violence. 

  
“It looks like you’ve gained a bit of color, but you’re still lukewarm. Neither hot nor cold.”  
  
“You won’t be able to block this. I’m moving too fast for a slow-witted half-wit, malformed, born wrong, stupid little brat like you to process with your rotting brain.”  
  
“Possibly. Hey Medaka, there was a boy who wanted to protect you, wasn’t there?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I had someone like that. But I really wish he wouldn’t. All of those times he tried to protect me, I never once said thank you. I would have been fine with it.”  
  
“Nanami!”  
  
“So, make sure you kill me now.”

 

 _Buying time aren’t you._ Nanami smiled as she realized Medaka was fighting entirely defensively. Even though their speeds were exactly matched, Medaka was making no effort to gain an advantage at all. None of her hits were truly trying to connect. That was why they could keep making casual banter like this. _For your little plan? I’ll play along._

 

Kamukura disappeared.  
He stepped out of the shadows in an entirely different wing of the hospital. It was then he realized he had been left entirely alone by Medaka, that he had been trusted by her again. The temptation flared up within him to push her off the cliff, on their agreed lover’s suicide and never jump off himself.  
  
If she acted this way because she still had hope, imagine if she fell to despair, just like Junko, just like himself. Just as that thought occurred to him, Kamukura turned his head and saw, Enoshima Junko appearing in the broken windowsill next to him. The atsmosphere became choked with the smell of blood.  


Kamukura saw the blood.  
Blood all over him, blood on Komaeda’s favorite jacket.

He pulled it over his shoulders and threw it off of him, until there was nothing left but the white shirt he wore underneath. He needed to keep it clean, he could not let any more red get on Komaeda. 

 

“Upupupupuupu!” The bear laughed at him from behind the broken window. When Kamukura walked past it, she appeared in the next one, and the next one, stretching on infinitely. “Listen up idiots, it’s lesson time from your beloved headmaster! The question of the day is, if Medaka, Nanami and Kamukura are all the same make and model then why are you the only one who feels like the knock-off grand? Why are you stuck being the bargain bin fifty percent off super genius?”  
  
He saw black. He saw white. They both flashed by his eyes in a snowstorm, faster than he could see. The entire world was rendered in black or white, either one or the other, they were unable to mix, unable to be both. They would always be separate, just like him.  
  
Black and white, Kamukura and Hinata.  
A boy  with mismatched eyes.  
A girl with one empty eyesocket and one full.  
A bear with two different eyes stitched together.  
  
Junko lowered the bear from in front of her face. “Oh, and I saw your little impression on me. Usually I would have you flagged for a copyright strike, but as an artist, I’m going to choose to see it as an homage.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
She lifts the bear back over her face again. “Damn man, you can think of ten thousand comebacks in half a second and that’s the one you chose? No wonder you’re in the remedial course even though you’re supposed to be the smartest guy here;”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Now, onto the main lesson. Kamukura Izuru was intended to be the Ultimate Talent, the absolute peak of talent. Once you learn a talent you demonstrate it perfectly. But perfection’s aint all it cracked up to be.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You can copy talents just as they are, but you can’t improve upon them once you’ve copied them. You could fight someone with the same talent as you ninety nine times, and win easily the first ninety nine times, but you can’t make any mistakes, can’t learn from them, and by the hundreth time you’ll have lost. That’s why a guy like you could even lose to Kumagawa, if he stopped going easy on you.”  
  
“Now you’re just being cruel.”  


  
He remembered it all. Enoshima’s words like the sound of broken glass screaming in his head as they fell apart. He looked at her head and saw that there were already cracks forming, and he longed to be like her. All he ever wanted was to fall apart, have his two halves split and become undone.  


“You’re already perfect so, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much effort you put in nothing about you can change.”  
  
I want to tell you a beary sad story.  
  
“There was a boy who wanted to change so badly he became a different person entirely, but even then he stayed the same. That’s why you can’t become me, and you can’t even become a loser like Medaka-chan. You can’t become anything.”  
  
He wanted to be like her. They were so different, they both had strings tied to them, they were both the only people who could see those strings, but she chose to dance on them when all he could do was sit still. WHat would it be like just once, to be able to throw his head and dance like that. She lacked everything, and he lacked everything and she was more full somehow. 

  
“I’m not perfect. I’m the same as I always was.” All he could do was fall apart, and put the pieces back together. All he could do was have his dead limbs sewn back together. All he could do was forget the boy he loved, and then meet him again. It did not matter to him how many times he repeated his mistakes, because the fact that he was still making them was proof that he was alive. “Half-broken, and always woefully incomplete.”  
  
A person who could never become the main character.  
A second string main character at best. An understudy.  
  
He pulled the switch down and all the lights in the hospital turned off at the same time. Nanami taken by surprise for a moment looked around and suddenly felt a hand over her mouth, smothering her.  
  
“Glaucoma, a disease for the elderly. One of the side effects is poor vision in the dark.”  
Medaka said, “Oh, I feel so so bad for a little kid like you suffering for this disease. You can cry about it all you want, I’ll let you.”  
  
She shoved her fingers straight into Nanami’s mouth, past her throat and forced her to swallow. It was an antagonist that Kamukura had made meant to destroy Seiko Kimura’s drug, effective right away.  
  
The symptoms of the drug which artificially brought her back to life began to drain out of her system, returning her to the dead. Medaka let go and let Nanami fall on the floor. 

  
Kamukura appeared with them again, holding out a hand to help Matsuda up.  In his other hand he held onto a flashlight which was the only source of illumination in the darkened hospital room. Kamukura’s brains and foresight, and Medaka’s sheer strength and talent. Together the two of them were the strongest duo possible. 

  
  
At all of this, Nanami did not laugh.  
She just sighed again. She did not laugh at the world, she just sighed at it. 

 

🦔  
  
“It would appear I was too naive.” 

  
“Nanami, that’s enough-” Medaka watched the painful display, of Nanami’s broken body forced to stand, dancing with half of her strings cut off.

  
“Regulating my strength with such a phony drug, dulling my strength by rejuvenating my life force, even though it’s called “analysis”, I was just trying to become a little weaker by using the strength of others.”  
  
It was over, the good guys won, the curtains fell and the credits rolled. So why was Nanami there, still standing, with those same dead eyes. That was the problem with dead eyes, it was impossible for them to look away or move. Their vision was fixed in death.  
  
“How the hell was that making you weaker?” Medaka asked.  
  
“I was too naive, trying to live a little longer. You’re right, I was just a little kid, not taking this seriously at all. I was the lukewarm one. Hurry up and kill me.”  
  
“Nanami-”  
  
“There’s no meaning in doing this,” Kamukura shouted louder than Medaka.  
  
“Be quiet!” Just once. She had broken her quiet, constant monotone only once to shout. She suddenly raised her s and sliced through the air, several invisible blades thrown at once. “But, I like meaningless things-”  
  
Kamukura’s hair fell. Each of them perfect, black long strands like those belonging to a doll. They fell to the ground where he was standing in a circle around him. What he saw in front of him was what made the puppetmaster loose all sensation in his fingers, like the strings had been wrapped too tight around them and cut them to pieces. His fingers loosened and the flashlight dropped to the floor, bouncing, breaking, and sparking unti;l his hair was lit on fire.  
  
In front of him a long needle was lodged in the corner of Matsuda’s eye, reaching all the way to his brain. It was the exact same method people used to scrape off the frontal lobe for lobotoies. His eyeball was pushed to the edge, nearly popping out of his eyesocket. Matsuda’s entire body seized, and he fell forward the collision with the ground pushing the needle in even further.  
  
“You really were my friend, Matsuda-kun. You were the only one that wouldn’t be my enemy.”  Nanami said with a smile that did not look like she was enjoying herself at all, and then her eyes were a red warning sign to Kamukura. “If you accepted me, I might not have been alone.”  
  
“What did you just?” Kamukura still had not processed what had just happened. He never wanted to. Matsuda-kun, his Matsuda-kun, the boy he wanted to only belong to him and not Junko.  
  
“It was Ninpo.”  
  
The boy only belonged to him. The boy who destroyed him. The boy who gave him life.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Your head will come off with the next one,” Nanami closed her eyes and upturned her lips again in another strained smile. “You have to protect your friends, Medaka. Isn’t that great? Now we have a reason to fight.” 

 

It was simple, the stronger she got the weaker her body got.  
The stronger her body got, the weaker she got. 

 

She looked at Medaka’s silence, she could not even burn anymore she was pushed past the point of no return. “What do you prefer guys with longer hair? You’re much like your father in that regard. Put bluntly, it’s unpleasant.” 

 

Why?  
Things were going.  
So right.  
  
Medaka and Nanami, both watched as the fire spread around them. The garden they were both standing in was burning up, as the old hospital was consumed. The rotten old building had been waiting for an excuse to break and fall apart.  
  
Medaka wanted to let the red inside of her out, and just like this fire, burn everything. Burn the world that could be so, so much better if it wanted to be. No, that wasn’t it, she couldn’t give a shit about other people, their happy endings, their sad ones, their entire stories. She just hated that she was someone who would never appear in those stories.  
  
She was someone who never should have been born in this world. She did not feel guilty about that, she had just told herself that. She resented. She resented all of them for denying her again and again, denying everything that she was. She hated their rejection. 

 

And the person she hated most of all, was the boy with hair like the sun and eyes like the sky who tried to reach his hand out and pull her into that world of normal people. The boy that gave her the dream that one day she might walk by his side. That dream, like her own mind, she just wanted to burn it up until it melted.  
  
“You’re so good Medaka. You were going to sacrifice all the anger you had at me for killing your family, and put me above yourself to save me. You deserve to be patted on the head and told your a good girl.”  
  
Nanami stepped forward, unbothered by the flowers of fire that were blooming all around her. Her skin was as thin as paper, and just as white, and she could not wait until she burned. 

 

“But let me tell you something about self sacrifice, if it feels good then it’s just vanity. Sacrifice is just loss, it just hurts, no part of it is good. You throw something away. You give up, it’s the exact opposite of heroic. So tell me, what are you going to throw away?”  
  
“What are you?”  
  
“My will to live. I need to die before that idiot brother of mine tries to save me again.” 

 

That was it. She was not fighting a remorseless killer, she was not even fighting a girl that was trying to save her brother. To return at least one small drop of the affection she had always given him.  
  
Medaka was fighting a human being.  
Medaka was about to kill a human being.  
She hated her enough to kill her. 

 

“You have someone like that too, don’t you?”  
  
Perhaps it was because they were connected, or maybe it was sheer coincidence, but Medaka and Nanami both had memories, of playing in the garden when they were younger, and the boy who promised to always protect them, wrapped a crown of flowers around their heads.  
  
But, those flowers were gone, and only a crown of thorns remained, and blood covered Medaka’s head. The garden they once stood in, was burning up before their eyes. 

  
She was Cain.  
And she was Abel.  
And one of them was going to be buried in the dirt. 

  
Now, rather than being plcuked like a weed, she was going to be scattered like a flower. 

 _This. This is the time and place where I break._  
Like that girl dressed all in blue promised her long ago.  
  
“Fine. Le’s dance.” Medaka said, as the flame light the ends of her dress on fire, and she did not even notice because whatever her anger was burned hotter. The beast pushed herself in a run towards Nanami.

 

Nanami ignored her.  
It was the first time that the person she was fighting felt no fear at all for her true nature.  
Either she will die, or I will.  
But all that can be dealt with a little later. There is a lingering warmth of blood from her stump of a hand, and it drips down, red, red, red, before it all disappears into red.  
  
The beast struck Nanami, her claws digging tino the girl’s leg, tearing away flesh and drinking the other girl’s blood. It splatters on the floor in a violent red, but that too burns away.  
  
Nanami does not move or even react. The warmth of blood is immediate yet, fading, like the intensity of a first love soon to be forgotten. A dying heart pounded hard in her chest. Her body, too, despite being streaked in sweat, was cold even with everything burning around her. She felt herself shiver, uncontrollably.  
  
She was not looking at the fight.

Her eyes were elsewhere.  
She still remembered the night dressed in white, her brother promised to show her a garden of flowers.  
  
_Soon, all of the dear and treasured memories, will become wilted flowers, weak, and soon to fade._

 

The beast struck Nanami, calws like nails ripping into the flesh of her other leg. Medaka was taking her time to kill her. Nanami wanted to click her tongue and tell her not to play with her food. She was enjoying herself, seventeen years of repressing her desires until they became this formless rage inside of her. They were vast and immeasurably deep, she desired the whole world, every single human, all of it, all at the same time.  
  
The fire does not stop, it only continues to spread. The scent of burning flowers in the air, to Nanami it was the most pleasing thing she could imagine.  
_  
_ _Even the memory of rain,_ _  
_ _Of the color he provided for her in front of an endless gray veil._

 

Medaka’s hands gauged out the flesh in her flank. She heard the sound of soemthing inside of her tearing. Medaka turned her arm and the flesh twisted, drip, drip, drip, as she removes her hands her nails are now covered in such a vivid red.  
  
Nanami thought Medaka’s nails looked cute in that golor. 

 _  
_ _Even the memory of sun,_ _  
_ _Of a cold white room, set ablaze by his presence._

  
Medaka was proud, and noble, no she just pretended to be. She fell just short of a lion. There was nothing she could do about that, one was a king, and one was a ravenous beast. It was her fault for starving herself for seventeen years, no matter how much she ate now she would never be hunrgy. It was not a simple case of Jekyll and Hyde, she could not just rampage for one night and wake up the good doctor again in the morning. 

 _  
_ _Even the memory of snow: Of the white night where he held her on his back, and promised to show her a field of flowers as soon as the winter ended._

 

A sad feeling overtook her, Nanami. It was like saying goodbye when you knew this was the last time you would ever see them again. When Medaka killed someone, she too would die. Her body was mostly broken by now, but her arm can still move and she grabs Medaka by the face and tries to force her away in midair. 

 

 _Beside me you would smile, and that would be enough._ _  
_ _A hand was enough to cross the rift between us,._ _  
_ _  
_ There were several things flashing before Nanami’s eyes, but Medaka only thought about one thing. How could she kill it? How could she dismember it? How could she make it not live anymore? What was the quickest way? What would make it stop moving? What would hit the off switch? 

 

 _Once,  just for a single moment of time, we were like budding roses dreaming of the future._ _  
_ _A warm light shined at us in the distance_

 

Nanami lost too much blood, and the world started to look darker. She knew it would be soon. Even like this, Medaka is crying. Nanami wanted to reach out and brush the tears from Medaka’s eyes with her still working hand, but that was inappropriate to do in a fight.  
  
Nanami’s hand slices through the air, and Medaka hits her with long round kicks that smash into her side and break her bones into pieces. 

 _  
_ _We thought it would never go away, and we could bloom slowly._ _  
_ _And there, as you laughed, you told me not to worry, because we’d stand in the flowers again._

 

“Nanami!”  
  
Medaka called her name out one last time, and forced the tears out of her eyes. As they looked into each other’s eyes in that moment, they could see they were both looking at the same place, there was a garden of colors reflected in each of their eyes.  
  
Medaka shoves her hand forward through the air, to reach out and grab Nanami’s neck.  
Nanami tilts her head to the side and her neck is sliced open. _  
  
_

A vital artery cut, she lost everything, her blood, get sight.  

 

They were both so happy that they had met those boots. Zenkichi. Rantaro. They were there for them,ready to reach out a hand and pull them back. They never said it, but…  
  
The only time they were truly happy.  
Was when they were together.  
They both promised they would be together again in the garden.  


_Someday._ _  
_ _Together._

 

They were truly sorry.  
Both of them had to break that promise.  
  
Medaka reached forward for Nanami’s heart.  
_I can’t be with you anymore, Zenkichi._ _  
_ _You’ll be the oldest sibling from now on, Ran-chan._ _  
  
_

At that moment Kamukura threw himself in front of Medaka. “I told you, you idiot. If you wanted to kill someone, kill me.”  
  
Her hand slides underneath his heart and between his ribs, and then pieces through his back and cuts all the way through Nanami. Medaka’s entire hand sparks as she uses the abnormality of other person. 

  


Nanami saw the images of flowers falling apart in her mind, petal by petal, by petal.  
All this time she just wanted to live a little bit longer.  
But she watched her brother kill himself over and over trying to fulfill that wish of hers.  
As her heart stopped, tears came to Nanami’s eyes.  


_Hey, Ran-chan._ _  
_ _I was able to act like a big sister in the end. Just once._

 _Well done, Medaka._ _  
_ _You really were like a little sister to me._ _  
_ _  
_ Her lips warped into a twisted facsimile of a smile, with her last words. “You did a good job killing me.” _  
_ _  
_ Her head fell forward, and she fell into Medaka’s embrace, as Kamukura pushed back fell away from both of them. She saw the look in Medaka’s eyes, and that girl was not angry anymore, all of that anger replaced with an endless expanse of a void.

 

 _Huh?_ _  
_ _Did I say my line wrong?_  
  
Nanami’s thoughts, fleeting just like her life. She was simply not able to smile like a normal girl. Right until the end.  
  
All the anger was gone.  
Fire all around her.  
Kamukura on the floor. Matsuda was an ice pick in his skull.  
  
Medaka kept holding onto a dead body in front of her. All three of them finally worked together, they all wanted the same thing, but…  
  
Medaka failed to understand someone again.  
Kamukura failed to make a real difference again.  
Matsuda failed to protect someone again.  
  
It was all because they were humans. This was human failure.  
Medaka kept holding onto the corpse in front of her, crying and screaming. In the back of her head, some part of her had detached herself from her body. 

 

 _Hey, Kumagawa is this what it felt like?_ _  
_ _When you did everything you could to try to convince Ajimu to live, and in the end she still wanted to die. She wanted it more than anything else, she wanted it more than she wanted you._ _  
  
_

_And I…_ _  
_ _If I had just asked you at that time how you felt._ _  
_ _Would things have turned out differently?_

 

🦔

Nanami dreamed.  
A boy and a girl sat together in a hospital room. The boy a little bit younger than the girl, too young to know what was going on. The first hospital check up of many. When her parents left the room, the boy screamed and cried until they allowed him to stay with her.  
  
There was a paper plate, and on it cut up watermelons. It was a scene not poetic, and lacking in any beautiful prose that could describe it. There was no garden, and no flowers, except the ones wishing her to get well soon.  
  
There was no knoll untouched by the sun, no deep forest, no maze of thorns, and no grey fog wrapping around everyone like a blanket.  
  
Nanami picked the watermelon in her hands, and wrapped her lips around it. She swallowed a slice.  
  
There were no children in the forest who lived for eternity.  
There were no faeries laughing, and insects whispering.  
There was no ephemeral fae retreating from the corner of your vision.  
  
Nothing was alive in this room at all.  
There was no eternity, no moment she wanted to last forever.  
  
“Ran-chan.”  
  
Nanami took another bite, and then looked down at the boy next to her. He had made such a big fuss about staying awake all night.  
  
She leaned forward, and touched his shoulder to gently shake him awake. Even then, he would not wake up.  
  
“Ran-chan.”  
  
She giggled.

And decided she would wait for him, just a little bit longer.   
Nanami Amami, smiled like a normal girl. 

 **I don't need a field full of flowers. All I need is a life with you in it.**

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN END!  
** **[Nanami Amami - failed ]**


	40. Damaged Goods

Hey, hey it's me your narrator! Shiranui Hansode. To be honest narrating is boring,  I've always wanted to be a clueless char as actor that has no idea what's going on just like all of you guys. 

Let's foreshadow a new character while we're at it

 I doubt it'll be important or anything. 

Anyway I'm thinking of handing narrating over to the narrator-bot 9,000. Im just lazy like that.  I was in the secret room. You know the secret room. The secret room that always exists in this room. Thought I'd introduce a new friend or accomplice same thing easily. Neet Hacker- girl stereotype. Now you know everything you need to know about her. I shouldn't even bother talking to her.

But I'm the chatty type so.

“Yo, Dead Blue.” I said. “What are you up to anyway?”

The interior of the room was vast. Pure white carpet, and pure white wallpaper complemented pure white furniture. Even I knew that white reflects light. That girl was crazy about the color white, so she had asked me to decorate this room deliberately. In the center of the room was a luxurious sofa and a wooden table. A chandelier hung from the strangely high ceiling. The bed was like something straight out of a movie set in medieval times, it even had a canopy. 

This was not just the dwelling of a neet, it belonged to a high class luxury neet. Of course in this place it looked impossible to get any sleep at all, but that girl lacked any delicate sensibilities lay there drowsily on her pure white sheets.  
  
“Mm, I had some good sleep. I’m pretty sure I got to bed at three am.”  
  
“It’s only been three hours, it’s six am now.”  
  
“Battery full!” She said, completely ignoring me. “Now let’s go face another day.”  
  
WIth a grunt she rose from her bed, blue hair bouncing. She was about my size (Which is saying something because my only distinguishing character trait is that I’m a small cute girl with blue hair, wow, I’m about to be replaced). A girl of tiny stature like her wore a jet-black men’s coat, that easily touched the floor and looked more like a dress. Her hair was a hawainn blue/ She walked over to three computers by the window opposite her bed. All three were tower models, the two on the right were typical size but the one in the middle was exceptionally large. They were all white of course. I just didn’t get why she was so into a color that was so easy to get dirty.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I reminded her.  
  
“You should try asking it in a more fun way if you want me to listen, Shicchan.” She cupped her chin in her small hands. “Mm, well I don’t think you’d get it even if I told you.”  
  
“No. That's wrong I've seen the 1995 movie Hackers at least three times, I'm basically an expert."   
  
She gave me a perplexed look. “Are you the kind of person that bases everything they know about hackers about how they appear in movies?”  
  
"Are you saying fiction isn't the same as real life."  
  
“Nope, it’s different..”  
  
“So you don't hack pcs by hitting random buttons and looking stylish while doing it? Then why are you do blue anyway if you're not trying to look cyberpunk?” 

She groaned. "Actually it's a lot more like-"  
  
“Nevermind, I don't care anymore.” It’s fun to pretend to be clueless in front of a know-it-all. They get so offended.   
  
“You don’t know anything do you? Life must be really hard for you. Well, I guess everyone’s suffering through something.” She said, knowingly. “Everybody knows hardship, or even if they don’t they’re at least exerting effort somewhere. Everyone. If there’s anyone who lives without suffering or exerting effort, it’s probably me.”  
  
She said without suffering.  
She said without effort.  
She said as if she were enjoying herself. 

“You don’t mind that I kidnapped you?”  
  
“Noooo, stuff like this always happens when you’re a special person. You know someone worth paying attention to. Not that you’d know that, shicchan. Ufufu, this is why I’m never bored.” She happily laughed. “Really, it’s never boring. Life is fun!”  
  
“You won’t be able to see your friend again, he may even be killed.” Wow. I didn't mean for that line to come out so villainous.   
  
“Hmm?” Dead blue tilted her head to the side. “Yup, but you know, what’s done is done. You’ve gotta think positively in life.” 

She kicked her little legs. It was almost cute, but goddamnit I’m supposed to be the cute blue haired one. Dead Blue. Blue on the verge of death. She had such a despairing name, but it was like despair did not even occur to her. She was without a doubt a genius. It was like the maximum amount of Ram possible for a human being was loaded onto her. There was not a single person who had seen a programm she had written and not been memorized. Beauty means the lack of pointless pointlessness. That’s why pointless people like Kumagawa are so ugly. The programs written by Dead Blue have no wastedness whatsoever. Not just her programs, the hardware she produces as an engineers, the motherboards, and CPU have no wastefulness either. She didn’t waste anything, sadness, despair, losses, struggle, her mind had no time for such pointless trifles. 

“So, do I just plug it in?” I said holding the USB port in my hand.

“Let me do it. There's no reason for you to do anything. "  She didn't even seem you notice other people.  Didn't need them at all.  What was really strange was she said such condescending things with a pure blue innocence,  as blue as her hair. 

“I guess you’re going to go back to pretending to be the friend of the girl who's like me. Or are you going to pretend to be someone who has friends?" She was not mean spirited, simply insensitive. "Well, do your best. That’s what other people do right, their best? I’ve never once done my best at anything but it sounds pretty fun.” 

 **> >> LOADING. ** **  
****NEW NARRATOR.**

 

🦔

“Life is a god-tier game.”  
  
Only people who’ve never experienced reality can think the world is actually balanced to let you clear each level by the skin of your teeth with a little skill and effort. You think every character you’ll meet has a deep backstory? That’s just a stale fantasy RPG trope. People in real life aren't as willing to talk things out. They're all such wonderful people but they never want to share their stories with me it's a little lonely.  In fact if you spend too much time thinking about the right thing to say to earn you the most points, they get impatient with you! 

The graphics of real life are plenty outstanding, but I’ve always preferred a more stylized cel-shaded or pixelated to look then infinity x infinity HD and infinity frames per second. I really have no idea at all why such an overehelming world, full of overwhelimg people need to be rendered in such high definition, they might actually look cute if they were made of low resolution pixel art.  
  
Besides Life’s just too darn complicated isn’t it? The best games are always the simple and beautiful ones.  
  
That’s true for chess, and it’s true for pacman. The longest lasting games have simple rules and concepts. Depth and flavor thrive within those simple rules and concepts.  
  
So how does real life measure up?  
If you forced me to come up with the basic rules and concept for how life really is, I can only think of one, and it’s not exactly simple: just live. Beyond that, you’re on your own.  
  
Not to mention that there are those who can’t act like everyone else. You’re not allowed to choose your stats at birth, and some people’s stats grow at different rates even if they work the exact same amount of time. The world is absurd and unfair. The world is stacked against the weak.

But I think that's way too sad, isn't it? What's the point of playing a game if everybody isn't having fun? 

Life isn't a game that just anybody can play.  
  
Because there are no rules.  
Because there is no consistent logic.  
Because there are no choices, pathways, or end objectives.

That's why I want to make it so life is more like a game! Its better when we all play together. Behind every single avatar or player there’s a real life person you know?

It must get lonely when life treats you like a bug in b the system.  When you try your best to level up but there's no experience points, no objectives, and no quests. Life would be better for everyone if it wad more like a game.

That’s why I decided to play a game with all of these people! If you remove all of the complicated variables of real life, then you can play a game where every single person can win. Happy endings are actually possible if you work hard to reach the end of a game. I don’t even mind being the final boss they have to defeat at the end if it can make everyone else happy.

There’s a lot of things you can learn from games to apply to real life. For exmaple never give up, rely on your friends, try your hardest. Honestly the world would be a lot happier place if people realized they were all the main player character. 

If they don’t want to be people then they should be characters in my game. If they want to run away from reality they can play with me. I don’t mind at all. I was programmed to make you all happy after all. I think running away is just fine. After all it's always an option in rpg fights when you're low on hp or mana. And turn based combat is so polite! Everyone takes their turn. Real life fights are just violent and mean and the monsters don't go poof if you defeat them. 

  
Oh, but don’t look so sad. Reality can be just like a game. You're the one with the controller.  You can choose just like a game and all of your decisions matter. This game is designed to make you feel hope. Mm, I’m sure if you make friends, collect all the fragments of hope then you’ll unlock the happy ending! Let's play it, a game programmed by a psychological artificial intelligence. 

 

🦔

 

**WEEK 3: HUMAN PSYCHO + LOGICAL**

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles.   
What was so great at solving puzzles anyway? Why was everyone so obsessed with winning games?   
  
There was a time he once thought winning meant something special too. When he was younger, there was a time when he thought himself highly intelligent, and gifted. There was a time that he loved himself. There was a time he thought he had something worthwhile to contribute to the world. Kids are stupid after all. They just don’t know any better.  
  
He naturally looked down on those around him. He believed he knew things nobody else knew. He had noticed things nobody else noticed, and because he was the only one in the know he became arrogant. As if there was a set of rules to life that only he could see, a script that only he could read.  If he was posed with a puzzling question and couldn’t find the answer, he would get antsy. That was how capable he thought he was, and he was able to wipe away all of his doubts simply by thinking of them.  
  
Every time he answered a question, he felt like he had accomplished something remarkable. Like he had become somebody. He soon began to think there was an elusive answer lurking behind every question. He was the kind of kid who could never leave any puzzle unsolved in front of him.  
  
However, as he was discovering the answers to a series of difficult questions that emerged - no, after he finished answering all of them - he found that he was left with a void. The moment you solve a puzzle the game’s over you know? A rubix cube loses the colorful appear when it's just six sides all the same color. I feel the saddest when watching the credits after I beat a game. But in real life has no game over screen, no credits, and no continue screen, it just simply continues to go on.   
  
Because there's no objective. There's no quest to complete. There's no good ending or bad ending to try for. 

That’s what he noticed. If he solved the problem or not, everybody else was just going on enjoying their lives without having to do such things. They were living happily without ever having to come up with these answers, or even questions, for that matter.

Real life isn’t a mystery game, or an adventure game. Nobody cares if you solve the puzzles, nobody at all! He was just some lonely kid living in a world made for himself, inventing questions and answering them just to make himself feel better. He was playing the game of life all alone. Life is such a fun game because it’s multiplayer, yeah, yeah, it’s like one big MMO. He replaced the other people in his life with puzzles. No, other people became his puzzles and when he ‘figured them out’ he lost interest. His bedroom had toys tossed callously all over the floor. Then he acted like he had any right to call himself lonely. He was convinced he could play through life solo, but to be honest he wasn't even that good at the game. 

He played at being a boy incorrectly.   
He was playing the game all wrong.

He wasn’t an onlooker to the game of life, he was just a loser.  Solving puzzles, figuring out the rules, leveling up, that was the role of the players of the game, and it was never his responsibility. It was no job for the common loser. For the comic sidekick.

  
He wasn’t having fun so he stopped playing games entirely.  
And that was fine. That was enough. He didn’t want to become happy or sad.  
  
Playing games loaded with risks were a waste of time. A life with no wins and no losses. He was shooting for a perfect zero. Not giving from anyone, not taking from anyone, that’s the kind of guy he was… or maybe that was the kind of guy he wasn’t.  
  
He didn’t want to be special. He was fine with being your common everyday loser. He didn’t even think he was broken in a particularly interesting way, other people had it worse than he did. He was just like this for petty and immature reasons. 

The boy who hated puzzles. The boy who hated games. 

**?????????**   
**Talent: Nonsense. (Whatever that means???)  
Mentality: Zero  
Likes: Quiet People, Geniuses  
Dislikes: Loud people, Geniuses, Mystery Novels **

“Seriously, a guy like me has no business taking himself so seriously.” He said as he sat up and rubbed at his eyes. He had been sleeping until a moment ago, and when he woke up he was greeted by-  
  
A corpse. 

For a moment he thought he was looking into a mirror and seeing his own rotten eyes staring back, until he realized.  
  
“Jeez. I wonder what that says about my self image. Or maybe myself definition. Or maybe my sense of self reflection. Anyway, this kid needs help. He’s worrying me.” 

He wasn’t talking to anybody. His only companion in the dark room he woke up in was a corpse. Not that he seemed to mind. Basically everything about his appearance, to the dodgy way his eyes avoided looking directly at anything he looked like someone who talked to themselves a lot. "Might as well be wearing a t shirt that says this kid has issues." His expression did not change at all as he saw that corpse. He stood up and tried to step away, only to crack a bone underneath his foot. His only reaction was to look at his shoe like he had just stepped on gum.  
  
Everything around him was going insane, again. Strategies, calculations, everything. He had no idea how he had gotten into this mess. No, he had absolutely no idea how this kept happening. 

“Interesting things should happen around interesting people, so just leave me out of it.” He wanted to live life as boringly as possible. Nothing ever went the way that he wanted, though. “It’s like someone out there hates me. Don’t they know the opposite of love is indifference?”  
  
A talent of his, if it could even be called a talent. He never did anything, but everything around him went insane. Abnormal incidents always occurred around him, strange people were always drawn to him. 

A body had been discovered,  but he didn't want to go to a class trial. He didn't feel like confronting the despair in front of him to find hope. "Avoidance and acceptance are strategies that have served me well until now."

He pulled a juicebox out of the pocket of his sweater, and then tried to stab a straw into it. He sipped from it quietly, as he waited for the next thing to happen. Things would just keep happening, it had nothing to do with him. 

The corpse.  
In both of his eyes there was a pair of scissors half open spread horizontally, bladed ends stabbed into both sockets. They baddes were almost certainly poking through the brain.  
That was enough to kill a person, but that was not the end.  
A knife in his neck.  
Cut, all the way to the bone.  
His chest cut open in a  y-front pattern. like he had already been autopsied.  
The palms of his hands stabbed through with scissors.  
His legs both of them broken, hanging useless underneath as he was pinned to the wall.  
Crucified.  
Bloodied.  
  
He didn’t think the crime was particularly vicious, or inhumane,  he just didn’t really get the point. What was the meaning of this spectacle? To destroy, destroy and destroy a body to this person’s extent, what meaning could there be? It didn’t look like one murderer, one killer did this, but many. If this murder were a painting it would have too many artists, or maybe too many colors, if this were a soups it would have too many cooks.

Nonchalant, he continued trying to stab his juicebox, until it exploded in his hands. He looked at the red liquid that had spilled all over his hands, and his sweater. “Man, why do I always gotta be the unluckiest guy in the room.” He looked over to the horribly disfigured corpse. “Oh, guess not.” 

Just then, the door opened.  
Kamukura Izuru saw him. The first thing he had done after waking up was inspect every room of the hospital. He saw him there, brown hair, yellow eyes, baggy everyday clothes, a sweater with a circle emblem on the center, an average sized frame on the thin sized. A person who didn’t look like anybody special.  
  
He was standing there next to a corpse covered in red. The boy put both of his hands up. “Hey, I know how it looks, or rather I know how I look but...” At his workplace they had told him that he was the one that looked most likely to be living a double life as a serial killer. That was a lie, he’d never had a job in his life. To be paid for your work you had to actually be good at something. But, if he had a day job, that’s probably what they would tell him.  
  
“This wasn’t my fault. I’m innocent.”

 

🦔  
  


What is a fatal wound?  
Stabbing someone with a scalpel underneath their heart until they bled out slowly.  
Yeah, that’s obviously one.  
Stabbing someone in the hand, cutting up their thighs, letting a spear fall from the ceiling, lighting the room on fire, and spreading poison throughout the whole room.  
Again, obvious.  
Dragging them through a window and causing them to fall several stories into the river below, and break their body from the fall, and drown at the same time.  
Naturally.  
Operate on someone again, and again, and again until almost every trace of their original personality was completely destroyed and their brain was practically sewn together scar tissue.  
That’s another good method. Pretty final, too.  
  
But a “fatal wound” didn’t refer to any of those trivial things. A fatal wound is untreatable. An incurable sickness. A lifelong terminal condition that never terminates. A wound that never heals, but refuses to kill you either. You’re not longer able to lead a life even though you’re living.  
  
That is a fatal wound. The kind of thing even the Super HIgh School Level Neurologist, or the Super High School Level nurse could not cure. As Matsuda was forced to be in the same room as Mikan, and Emukae he could not help think of that.

Those are some really depressing thoughts Matsuda, you should talk about your feelings more. Nothing good comes from keeping those feelings all bottled up.

The girl who was always covered in bandages.  
The girl who was dead but kept on living.  
The girl who was fatally wounded with no hope of recovery - eh, which one was he talking about again? 

“D-d-don’t look at me like that, I can tell you’re thinking about something mean.” Mikan said, snapping at him.  
  
 **TSUMIKI MIKAN**  
 **Talent: SHSL Nurse  
Mentality: Minus  
Likes: Sterilized Smells, Alcohol  
Dislikes: Oversized things  
** **Forbidden Action: Cannot use her talent**  
  
“I’m always thinking about something mean. But don’t worry, I’d never insult you behind your back. I prefer insulting idiots to their faces so I can see them cry.” Matsuda hit his head back against the wall he was leaning against as he stretched out. “Goddamnit, why do I always get stuck with the headcases?”  
  
“It’s probably because you decided to be a head doctor.” Emukae said, as chipper as ever.  
  
 **EMUKAE MUKAE  
** **Minus: Raff-Rafflasia**  
 **Mentality: Minus  
** **Likes: Gardening, Wounds  
** **Dislikes: Cute things  
** **Forbidden Action: Cannot touch anybody with her hands.**  
  
“Oh damn, you’re right. 

After Medaka had killed Nanami, Matsuda took her body away. He did not let anybody else touch her. Afterwards he took a nap in Kamukura's arms. Kamukura and Medaka traveled to the place where he had been keeping her brother’s body.  
  
The Ultimate Imposter.  
Kurokami Maguro.  
Miyakanojou Oudo

Kamukura had collected all of their bodies, and he was keeping them in the morgue of the hospital. Medaka followed him, holding onto her brother’s head and saying nothing the entire time.  
  
When they got there, Oudo’s body was missing. Kamukura swore he had done nothing to it, but Medaka did not believe him, and the two of them got into an argument. Well, Medaka yelled, and Kamukura replied in the same quiet monotone as always. Medaka said she wanted to be left alone and left them there in that hospital.

When Matsuda woke up all of these events were recapped to them. He turned his head and saw his eye bandaged up in the mirror. He immediately saw that his reflection was smiling back at him and realized that reflection could not be his, he never smiled. It was Kumagawa in the mirror smiling back at him.  
  
“Ah, I’m damaged goods now too.”  
  


**Matsuda Yasuke**   
**Talent: SHSL Neurologist  
Mentality: Zero  
Likes: Manga, Scalpels  
Dislikes: Other People  
Forbidden Action: Must hold a person's hand at all times. **

Emotions. He felt them turn into nothing.  
He broke, he broke, he broke those feelings one by one.  
He had been wounded now too, like Kumagawa, like Komaeda, like Kamukura.  
The parts were going to rust out and break.  
He was no longer the doctor, he was the patient.  
But, if he wasn’t the doctor. If he wasn’t a neurologist, then he was no one.  
Don’t you understand?  
He didn’t become a neurologist because it was fun.  
Before he was a neurologist he was just some kid, .  
Just a whiny brat that no one could stand.

And he couldn’t stand himself.  
Even if everyone else was broken around him he didn’t want to break.  
It seemed like anyone and everyone harbored some kind of expectations for him.  
And he wanted to meet those expectations.  
What was wrong with living that way?  
To not want to be thought of as useless.  
To not want anyone to realize how small he was.  
What was wrong with being afraid of being tossed away?  
What was wrong with being afraid of being betrayed?  
  
Matsuda Yasuke, had suffered a fatal wound. He sat with his hand over his bandaged eye, sulking about that.   
  
“I don’t know why I have to be here. I didn’t do anything wrong…” Mikan said, shrinking away from him.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, Mikan did everything wrong!” Emukae  parroted. “So be sure to punish her real good.”  
  
“That’s not what I said at all.”  
  
“Ugh, why won’t you shut up about your problems? Can’t you see I’m trying to be a self-absorbed dick that only cares about his own problems?” Matsuda snapped at both of them.  
  
“I’m sorry for being ugly, and stupid, and that all I do only ever causes problems, but it’s not my fault-”  
  
“Yeah, if you’re ugly I think it’s your fault for being born ugly. If you’re stupid it’s your fault for being born stupid. Jeez, you’re making me miss Kumagawa here at least he had a spine.”  
  
Emukae observed Matsuda’s expression from the side. “Oh, you miss your friend? That’s a pretty straightforward feeling coming from someone so dysfunctional with relationships as you, Yasuke-kun.”  
  
“Do not. Missing him is like missing an inoperable tumor in your brain, except that tumor grew a mouth and won’t shut the fuck up.”  
  
“Wow then you must miss him a lot.” Emukae touched her own face, her skin started to sizzle in excitement.”You only use those really long insults when you really care.”  
  
“Anyway,” Matsuda sat up leaning forward until his back was curved. “You just want to avoid Hinata, don’t you? You don’t want to be around any version of him that remembers your involvement in the Kamukura project.”  
  
“I was bullied into it! I was just trying to live up to everyone’s expectations.” Mikan cried out.  
  
Well jeez, when you put my motivation in a whiny voice like that it almost sound pathetic. Matsuda thought, before he closed the manga volume he had desperately been trying to read to ignore both of them. “I’m gonna bully you right now.”  
  
“Please do,” Emukae was laughing.  
“Please don’t.” Mikan wasn’t. 

The Mikan he had known in the time of the Kamukura project was so different. 

Like a girl on the other side of the mirror, smiling at the crybaby he saw in front of him.  
She wore a white apron over her school uniform.  
It was stained with blood, wounds to the head tended to bleed a lot.  
Next to her there was a dish of bandages that she had slowly peeled off of his head and changed. She was carrying a tray away of silver tools that Matsuda asked her to clean.  
  
Kamukura sat on the bed, staring into space as usual. Around this time his hair had grown past his shoulders. There was no trace of the brown haired boy who used to thank Mikan for bringing him snacks, and playing card games with him to keep him company. Due to being desperate for attention, she was far more social than the main doctor attending to him who preferred to sit in the corner reading manga.  
  
“Do you think he’ll remember what we did to him?” Mikan asked Matsuda.  
  
For a moment Matsuda almost thought that girl was capable of thinking about people other than herself. “He won’t remember anything.”  
  
“Eh?? Did something go wrong in the surgery?”  
  
“No, he’s just stupid.” Matsuda said. They were talking about Kamukura like he was not there, like he was just a ‘thing’ in the same room. “He can hear and see just fine, but he won’t respond no matter what you do, because doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. He’s like a newborn baby, all he can do is sit there and cry, except he can’t even cry so he’s even worse than a baby really.” 

 _Stupid brat._ Matsuda muttered to himself as he looked away.  
  
Mikan who had been troubled until a moment ago, smiled for the first time in a long while. “A baby…?” She crawled onto the same bed Kamukura was sitting on her knees, and sat there behind him. Her fingers found their way into his hair. “You can’t do anything on your own now can you? You poor, helpless, thing.”

Mikan began to braid his long hair, tying twists and knots it in with her fingers. She was giddy, girlish.  
  
“You don’t have to cry anymore, because mommy will protect you. You’ll never be scared, because mommy will always be there for you.”  
  
She kept playing with his hair.  
  
Matsuda was going to stop her, but what she said next made the words stop in his mouth. “Mommy will raise you much better than that woman did me…” 

He didn’t want to look in the broken mirror.  
If you stripped away all of the confidence he had in himself, you would be left with her.  
A sniveling child.

A crybaby.  
MIkan just didn’t hide it.  
He never wanted to be like that.  
Pathetic. Useless. Unwanted.  
He never wanted anybody to see his wounds. If you were going to hurt him please hurt him underneath his clothes where he could hide it away.  
He didn’t want to look in the broken mirror, so he looked away.  
  


🦔

Kamukura interrupted his thoughts by opening the door. He was standing there, holding a boy in a hoodie by the hood the same way a kitten would be lifted by the scruff of its neck. Then he just dropped him.  
  
 **Kamukura Izuru / Hinata Hajime  
** **Talent: Super High School Level Hope  
** **Mentality: Minus  
** **Likes: Kusamochi  
** **Dislikes: Sakuramochi  
** **Forbidden Action: ????????**  
  
“I found the killer.”  
  
The mission for this week, on the first day, assigned by the game master. **Find the person responsible for the serial murders happening on the streets. Because Murderers are irresponsible human scum who don't deserve to live. They're no longer human. They're imposters in human skin. Spot the human failure amongst your group.**

“I didn’t do anything.” That boy said, brushing himself off. “In fact I have a policy of not doing things so I won’t be at fault in cases like this.”  
  
“That’s a boring policy.”  
  
“Most things that are peaceful are boring.”  
  
Kamukura grumbled to himself. It was easy to tell he did not like this person already. 

“Who are you then?”  
  
“No-one special.”  
  
“Most people who say that turn out to be serial killers in a predictable twist,” Kamukura said.  
  
“Why do people keep saying that every time I introduce myself?”  
Just because he ran into more corpses than the average guy.  
Just because there were lots of crosses that sprung up at his feet.  
Just because he was the witness to so many crime scenes.  
How tiresome.  
  
“Why are you here then?”  
  
The boy tilted his head to the side. “Motives are things that other people have.” He surveyed the room, it looks like a man in a bloodstained labcoat, a nurse who was frantically crying and begging, and a rotten corpse that was capable of speaking. Great, just great. Just once he wanted to run into somebody who was normal, a bit on the stupid side, but otherwise kind and endearing. “I just happened to be here, just walking through.” 

“What’s your name then?”  
  
“Who knows. I actually am proud of the fact that I have only told my real name once.”  
  
“What a boring thing to take pride in.”  
  
“It’s because I have nothing else to take pride in. It’s better if I don’t tell you my name. There are three who have called me by my real name to date, and not one is still living.”  
  
“...Just three?”  
  
“One died in a head on collision with a plane.. One is dead, but not dead. The third was tinkered with by human experimentation and then died in a fire.” Jeez, what was he doing? He had to remember three bad things. No, he had never forgotten. He did not need to remember, because he always thought of them. They were quietly staring at him? Someone had really brought down the mood? Who had done that? Who couldn't read the mood in the room at all? Oh, it was him. 

“Wait shit, Ikkun?” Matsuda finally noticed the boy in front of him, reacting to the words _human experimentation_ of all things. Ikkun, like I-kun, the boy who never gave out his name and only ever referred to himself as (boku), the boy who spoke like he was the narrator of a novel. 

“Hm?” Kamukura looked over with curiosity, his short hair brushing over his shoulders.  
  
“I saw this kid and his friend when the ER3 asked me to consult on the orange seed.”  
  
Kamukura paused, “I don’t know what any of that means.”  
  
“Never heard you say that before. Oh wait I have.”  
  
“A student can only be as competent as his teacher, and my teacher’s a total failure.” 

“Harsh. Who taught you to be such a bitch? Oh wait, I did.” Matsuda waved his hand in the air to wave Kamukura off. “The orange seed, basically the american version of the Kamukura Project, it was based in Houston. They called on me for my input once or twice.”  
  
“Wow, learning you were committing human experimentation on other people just makes the human experimentation you committed on me seem so much less special now.” Kamukura said, his voice laced with a poisonous amount of sarcasm.  
  
“Jeez why weren’t you the one that died in a fire?” Matsuda itched at the bandage over his eye. Even though Kamukura told him not to scratch it. “I didn’t do anything but look, I only made contact with America in the first place so I’d have somewhere to flee if everything that happened in Hope’s Peak came to bite me in the ass.”  
  
“That’s very ethical of you. Really taking responsibility for your actions there.”

“Oh shut up, if I had a sense of ethics or responsibility you wouldn’t even exist.”  
  
“Um, am I interrupting something? Because I can just go.” Ikkun asked. He really, really wanted them to tell him he could just go.

In Houston Texas, in America, there’s a research facility called the ER3 system. There, the brilliant minds from around America, nay, around the world, gather , and it is referred to as the Ultimate bastion of learning. It’s also known as the Comprehensive Research Center. It was a gathering place for those who loved learning and research ad research above all else.  
  
Unlike Hope’s Peak they didn’t give a damn about their public image. They stood for nothing, especially not hope. An entirely nonprofit organization, they dared not sell their knowledge or research findings, and they were in a sense a closed and introverted sort of secretive organization.  
  
There were only four basic rules:  
Have no pride.  
Have no principles.  
Have no attachments.  
No whining.  
  
The utlimate destination for those who wanted to do research, to know, who had to know. They gathered highly esteemed college professors to “frontline” researchers, a tuly pride-free assembly with an absolutely terrible reputation in the news media who ridiculed them as a “cultish pack of overeducated loonies.”  
  
It was the exact opposite of the popular, adored by the public, academy that existed to spread both hope and talent, whose students were gathered and treated like celebrities. Which is why it was almost completely unknown in japan. 

“This guy was the closest thing the ER3 had to a reserve course student.”  
  
In preparation for the long term, the ER3 system implements a study abroad program. The program itself lasts ten years. Even the entrance exam was unusually difficult. Even in the application guidebook it said “There are no perks. This does not guarantee your future. No one will come to rescue you. We offer you only an environment that may sate your intellectual curiosity.

“So basically unlike you reserve course students he wasn’t trying to be as special as the main course students without doing any of the work.”  
  
“Hey, he passed a test. I passed a test too.” The stoic and reserved Kamukura, suddenly began arguing back with Matsuda like he was a child. “It’s not that hard.”  
  
“Actually, you failed the entrance exam. They just let you in because they thought you’d make an ideal subject.”

"Can we not?"Ikkun gave an exhaustive sigh at the two bickering in front of him. To him that was his answer to all of life's problems. I really would rather not.

“You just wanted me for my body! Admit it!” Hinata snapped  
“Umm… actually, I dropped out of the program halfway through.” Ikkun spoke up. “So we don’t need to argue who’s study boner is bigger, it’s obviously yours.” This guy put the dead in deadpan.   
  
“See, see he dropped out!” Kamukura pointed. Even children knew it was rude to point.  
  
“So did you,” Matsuda said.  
  
“I dropped out, and I got on a plane away from houston and I woke up here.” Ikkun spoke in a faint voice. Just standing there he looked so weak that a particularly strong breeze might blow him over. “Only fifty percent of that was a lie.”  
  
“Then tell fifty percent of the truth!” Hinata snapped at him.  
  
“I don’t remember. Memory’s busted. Brain broke. Sorry. I don’t even remember that guy, even though he has a personality that’d be hard to forget. One of those personalities."  
  
“Just call me an asshole it's faster. You said that you don’t remember stuff that well last time I spoke with you too.”  
  
“Dunno why. I don’t want an amazing memory or anything, I’d just like one that works.”  
  
“Maybe it’s because you don’t give a shit about people besides yourself.” 

Ikkun’s face did not change even as he was insulted. You could probably stab him in the guy and his eyes would not even flinch. Whether he was alive or dead, his eyes would still remain open, and he’d keep staring forward like that. “Oh yeah that’s probably it.” He didn’t try to argue either. “Oh, but there is someone. Someone I give a shit about. Yeah, that’s what I came to this city for maybe.”  
  
“You don’t like giving a straight answer, don't you?” Kamukura asked.  
  
“More fun that way. Like a guessing game. You’re the one who was complaining about being bored.” Ikkun pulled his hood down revealing his face. It wasn’t much of a face. The only distinguishing feature were those rotten eyes. Maybe they weren’t born with eyes that color, maybe their had slowly rotted away and became the color of rotten flesh over time. “It’s for her…” 

 _It’s for her.._  
Matsuda could not help but hear his own voice in his ears. 

He reached forward and grabbed Kamukura by the sleeve. “Hey, let’s just trust him for now.”

 _Trust them?_  
His dictionary lacked an entry for having faith in people. And trust was certainly out of the question.  
Trusting a complete stranger was insane.  
And he was a stranger to everyone he knew.  
Entrusted.  
Please, entrust, placing.  
Hey, hey, this is almost like.  
Trusting and being trusted in return.  
Like the feeling is mutual or something.  
  
Ikkun reached out to Matsuda’s hand offered in front of him. He resolved himself and gripped that hand. He felt like he had grasped the hand of a human being.  
  
See, that’s how a social link is formed! 

Did someone like him have the right to trust others? To be trusted?  
At all of those questions, Ikkun muttered to himself.

”It's all just nonsense anyway. "

If it was nonsense it didn't matter.

If it didn't matter it did not hurt as much.

That was his faint hope, if you could even call that hope.

And then he stopped caring.  
He tried to stop caring.  
If he could he would be playing through life on easy mode right now. 

And Matsuda noticed he said the same line Kumagawa did. The same line Komaeda did.

But he did not smile. 


	41. Human Failure

Games are more fun when you play them together.  
But these three boys had been playing alone their entire lives. 

Munakata Kei threw arms at his sides and let knives fall from his sleeves and caught them in his hands. 

Hijirihara Takumi drew out a combat knife and the way he held it was the mirror image of Ikusaba Mukuro.  
The stranger in white hair casually flicked up his neon red-orange sunglasses, holding a knife that was the same eccentric color between his fingers by the blade as he casually observed the other two.  
  
Those three met and decided at an intersection of Towa City, a four way crossway, and decided to kill each other. I tried to tell them not to, but they don’t listen to the disembodied voice of the narrator.  
  
Those three had no choice but to play alone. Player 2, Player 3, Player 4, they had all died. Death was an occupational hazard for serial killers like them. They’re called psycho killers, because there’s no trace of humanity in their actions. Human lost. Or human disqualified. Or maybe human failed. Killers who could not be understood by other people, and could barely understand themselves.  
  
All three of them were facing each other knives drawn - hey, hey since when did this area become PVP enabled! 

Death makes life feel more vibrant, more colorful. People remember their lives in vivid detail, like a spinning, flaming lantern of many colors is shining right in front of their faces, when they get close to death. I don’t know what that’s like, because artificial life like me is incapable of dying. But, I wonder what life looks like to those three who confront death every single day.  
  
Their eyes, their hands, the colors they see…  
  
🦔  **FLASHBACK 🦔**

 

 _What are these hands for…?_ _  
__Kyeehahahaha. Man._ _  
__Who’s got time to spend all day thinking about dumb questions like that?_ _  
__These hands are obviously for cutting idiots to pieces._  
  
  


Hair bleached white.  
The sides of his head shaved.  
His hair tied back behind him in  pony tail.  
Both ears pierced.  
Three earrings on the right ear.  
A cellphone strap hanging from his left.  
Neon sunglasses covering half his face.  
The shade was called “Blood-orange.”  
A tactical vest left unzipped with many, many pockets.  
Underneath a black shirt and a red hoodie.  
Grey camo shorts.  
Black military boots.

A black tattoo on the right side of his face that looked like three crescent moons.  
A hazard sign on the right sleeve of his hoodie. 

 

 **Hitoshiki Zerozaki** **  
****Talent: Zerozaki Killing Mentality** **  
****Mentality: Minus** **  
****Likes: Knives, Karaoke, Classic Literature, Loud People** **  
****Dislikes: Quiet people.**  
  
Hitoshiki Zerozaki. He dressed like a toad in the rainforest, his colorful appearance was a warning of his poison. He was eccentric, so eccentric that he thought of killing as the most normal thing in the world. 

  
Hitoshiki was raised by a contract killer. His older brother. Hitoshiki knew he would never be normal by anyone’s standards, but he always thought his brother was a weirdo. 

  
  
A forest scene. A tall and thin man with a body like a wireframe doll was reading by the light that sifted between the gaps in the forest canopy. He adjusted his glasses and continued to read _The Stranger_ which is ironic because he failed to notice the glint of a knife being drawn in the sun behind him.  
  
Hitoshiki ran up the side of a tree and bounded in the air. He tried to bring the knife into his brother’s back, but before he could Big Bro suddenly turned his entire body around and kicked him away.  
  
“Tch…”  
  
The heels of Hitoshiki’s combat boots dug into the dirt, knocking a few leaves into the air behind him. He threw the hand holding his knife behind him and touched the ground to steady himself, before charging forward brandishing that knife with lethal intent.  
  
“My, my…”  
  


Big bro felt terrible for treating a book like this. He smacked Hitoshiki’s hands away weveral times, and when Hitoshiki went in for the slash at his stomach, Big Bro caught his knife between the pages and closed the book over it. Hitoshiki drew two more knives from his combat vest and Big Bro blocked them with the book, they dug into the front cover entirely ruining the pages.  
  
“I got…” Hitoshiki took a step forward, only to step on a rope trap and be pulled upside down. He hung from the tree in the perfect imitation of the hanged man, as his knife and sunglasses fell off of him. “You…..?”  
  
“It’s only been three months and six days, but that appearance is quite comical Hitoshiki.” Big bro said as he removed the book from in front of his face and looked his brother in the eyes.  
  
“Yo, big bro! It’s been awhile! But, why do you have this trap set up?  
  
“Ufufufu, because I knew you were in the vicinity. I taught you to be prepared for everything, right?”  
  
“Is that right?” HItoshiki’s expression sank as he hung there upside down. “By the way, do you think you can let me down now? The blood is rushing to my head.” 

 

“Oh, that’s right.” Big bro adjusted his glasses. “But before I do that, some discipline is in order for the little brother who would try to kill his older brother.” 

 

“Eh…? Wait a sec-” 

 

Big brother raised him. Big brother put a knife in his hand. Big brother taught him how to kill. Big brother always saved him when he was in trouble. Big brother beat him… that was the kind of relationship they had.  
  
The left side of his jaw was sore. Big brother hit him hard in the face without holding back. His cheek was swollen. Afterwards, brother had stopped to get him an ice pack, and stuff a tissue in his bleeding nose. Big brother wouldn’t stop fussing. “If you’re gonna get so fussy then don’t hit me in the first place, dumbass…” 

  
His big brother was walking a few steps ahead of him now. His brother dressed in a suit and tie, like a normal salaryman. One time he held Hitoshiki and cried. _Hey, why can’t I be a normal big brother to you?_ Hitoshiki was young but he already knew the answer back then. _It’s because you kill people big bro._ He had no idea why his brother’s face was like that at the time. His older brother who always smiled at him no matter what he did making such a tearful expression. HItoshiki had no concept of normal, he only knew his life with big bro, so he thought there was nothing to cry over.  
  
Big bro was big bro. Big bro was a killer.  
  
“Hey, big bro. That. Any thoughts on letting it go?” 

 

Big bro spun a pair of scissors around his long thin fingers. “You mean this? Unlike a playboy like you, I give my everything to the people I love, women and weapons both. I can’t just kill with any pair of scissors these scissors are speial to me.”

  
  
“Tch. Are you saying that I don’t have the right, yet?” The two of them had walked through the forest until they reached a creek. HItoshiki saw his face on the surface of the water, and threw a rock to shatter that image in the water. _No one wants to see that._ “Then how about, I’ll help myself to those scissors when you die, Big bro.” 

  
Hitoshiki talked about the death of his only brother with a casual attitude. Big brother killed people. Big brother would die one day. They would never die peacefully surrounded by their loved ones, they didn’t deserve such a lovely death. Hitoshiki stopped crying and wondering when his bro would come home a long time ago, now he laughed at the thought of his brother’s grisly end.  
  
“As a memento?”  
  
“No, I’m just throwing out the trash.”  
  
“Do whatever you want.”  
  
“Kahahaha! That means I can kill you can take it by force.” 

 

“Well, technically you could do that.” No matter how many times he had tried to kill big bro his face remained the same. No emotion ever crossed it. What was he doing looking down on him? Cocky bastard. Ever since the day big bro cried, Hitoshiki wondered how he could make his brother cry like that. He wanted to break his brother’s face just a little bit.

  
“What the hell… You seem confident. Are you looking down on me saying I can’t kill you? Or are you just thinking you could kill me whenever you want?”  
  
“Ufufu, I wonder…”  
  
Hitoshiki kept throwing stones into the water. He wondered what one of these stones would look like if he threw it at the back of his brother’s skull and cracked it open. The sight of his brother’s brains leaking out only to be washed away by the river water. 

  
His brother tried to get rid of him once. _Go live a normal life. You don’t have to live like me._ His brother bought him normal clothes to wear, lived with him in a normal apartment for awhile, brought him normal books to read. Zerozaki didn’t understand the appeal. His older brother always dressed himself up like a normal salaryman, he tried to pass as a normal person, he tried to talk with other people. It’s like he missed the normal life he had left behind to become a killer, but Hitoshiki had no frame of reference for that. One day he got a tattoo on the side of his face, and both of his ears pierced so he would never look normal again. He was in middle school then, his brother scolded him all night for his fashion choices.  
  
“Either way. I have no intention of having a deathmatch with you, so the question itself is pointless.” 

 

Hitoshiki tossed a stone up into the air and caught it. “If the two of us had a death match, who’d still be standing?” 

 

“It’s a question of who would kill their opponent, so it’d probably be you.”  
  
“Hee…” Hitoshiki tilted his head like a curious child. “Whyzzat?”  
  
“Because, there’s those who would kill their older brother, but there’s no such thing as someone who would kill their little brother?”  
  
“Huh? Whatcha talking about? There’s plenty of screwed up people out there…” _Just like us._ Hitoshiki said with a pure white smile. “I bet it happens all the time, older brothers killing their younger brothers.”  
  
“That person is no longer human. It doesn’t matter what they are, but that kind of person can no longer be called an older brother.” 

 

 _Do you know why older brothers are born first?_  
He had no idea. He didn’t want to spend all day thinking about stupid questions.  
Leave that to people who could think.  
Hitoshiki didn’t understand.  
He didn’t understand his brother’s smile at that moment.  
  


Emotions aren’t all that great. That’s what Hitoshiki thought. He was fine if he were completely alone. He killed people after all, if he bitched about being lonely or sad after killing people that was just selfish. The connections that sheep formed to protect each other had no use for a wolf that devoured sheep in order to live. Yet, his brother was lonely, and formed a family because of it. 

 

He didn’t get it. He didn’t get it at all. Big bro was such a weirdo.  
 _Why don’t you want to kill me, big bro?_

 

🦔  **ANOTHER FLASHBACK ... WE GET IT THEY'RE KILLERS BUT THEY'RE LONELY🦔**

  
  


**Munakata Kei** **  
****Talent: Killing Impulse** **  
****Mentality: Abnormal** **  
****Likes: Sunflowers, Tea** **  
****Dislikes: Rude people** **  
****Forbidden Action: ??????**

The first color he saw was red. 

  
A bright crimson that was glittering as it splashed across the screen. He saw it in a horror movie, he had snuck out of his parent’s collection to watch. He did not think the movie traumatized him or anything like that, but rather this had always been inside of him.

  
  


The sight of gut’s spilling out. So pretty. There were such pretty organs inside of him. He just had to steal a knife from the kitchen and stab it into his organs and cut vertically. Then pull out his internal organs and scatter them. And then chew on his own liver to liven things up and stab blades into his eyes and he could see red forever. He could cry scarlet.  
  
The image of blood remained in his mind and played back in an endless loop. He was only in elementary school at the time. He stopped watching the movie and walked all the way to the kitchen, and held the kitchen knife at his stomach. His mother stopped him in time and scolded him. Munakata had no idea why she looked so scared. He just wanted to see the pretty blood.  
  


 _Don’t play with knives you could have died._ _  
__You could have died._  
His mother’s voice repeated.  
If he died his mother would be sad. That was the first time he realized the feelings he had were different from the feelings that others shared with me.  
  
Even as his mother was holding him all he could think of was that his mother had pretty organs as well. He could stab a knife into her head and then cut straight through her skull, past the throat, and slice the collarbone, and sunder the ribs and reach the aorta, and then he could reach his mother’s heart. 

 

Her chest torn open like that his mother’s heart would spurt blood everywhere. He wanted to see the moment where blood splashed, and sparkled like so many fireworks. As his mother bandaged his finger like any normal mother would for the way he had cut himself while gripping the knife so clumsily, Munakata realized in that moment while he had a normal mother he was not a normal son. 

 

The next day when he was alone he acted out his fantasy’s on one of his stuffed animals. The kitchen knife raised into the air, stabbed into the teddy bear’s stomach again and again, all of his limbs were ripped off, and he was torn into pieces. Munakata tilted his head and looked at the broken toy.  
  
His mother caught him halfway through, and scolded him again. Despite the odd behavior of her son, she didn’t raise a hand at him, or shout at him. She just calmly told him if he broke his teddy bear she wasn’t going to buy him a new one. He needed to take care of his things.

 

Perhaps it was because his mother was excessively patient that Munakata realized the way he was acting was wrong. He looked at the broken teddy bear on the ground, and then looked up at his mother and imagined her torn into pieces just like that bear, stuffing falling everywhere. If his mother died she would not be able to hold him anymore. If his mother died he would not be able to play with her anymore. 

As he held his mother’s hand and waited for the school bus, Munakata fantasized about pushing another child in front of the bus and watching them get run over. Even though the sight of that would certainly make his mother sad. 

 

When he went out to the woods to play with his younger sister, his sister found a creek and began splashing around in the water. Munakata thought instantly about how easy it would be to push his sister’s head under the water until she stopped struggling and then leave her here in this river where no one would find her. He could imagine the horrified look on his parent’s faces when one of his sister’s shoes washed up downstream. The way her body would turn blue in the cold, and then start bloating after a few days of floating in the water. 

  
He wanted to see, red, red, red.  
More red. He wanted to experience it for himself. He wanted to spill blood with his own hands and dye them red. He wanted to see the life and red drain away from someone’s body.  
  
He wanted… He wanted to kill.  
But, then they would die.  
  
Munakata once snuck into a hospital because he wanted to see a dead body. His sister was sick with the flu at the time. He went to the morgue and stole one of a book. It was an autopsy manual, when he opened the pages he saw diagrams of human bodies with dotted lines drawn over them indicating where to cut. Munakata realized in that moment that he was how he saw every living human being besides himself.  
  
He looked at them like they were waiting to be disesected.  
He saw the dotted lines to cut around, their veins, their arteries, the places to cut that would produce the most blood. He saw the seams he wanted to pull apart. When he looked at them their heads rolled off, and every single one of their doll limbs were pulled from their body. 

  
When he looked at another person all he could think about was how to kill them. That was when he decided he needed to be alone. Mother and father had his younger sister stil, they would not miss the child that only thought of killing people. His sister would find someone new to play with. Everything would be solved if he disappeared alone. 

 

The day he tried to run away his sister came back from the hospital. He had tried to leave in the middle of the night, but his sister was a light sleeper. She grabbed him from behind and begged him not to go. He still remembered, his sister’s crying face, her small voice.  
  
“No, no, big brother would never hurt anybody. My big bro is the kindest…”  
  
So fragile.  
So breakable.  
  
Munakata caressed his sister’s cheek. He moved his fingers to wipe the tear from her eyes. Then, without any hesitation he gouged out her left eye. He ripped it out and squished it between his fingers. 

 

His sister’s scream woke his parents up. Munakata drew a knife and held it to his sister’s throat. “Hey shut up. Stupid sister, you woke them up! I was going to kill them in their sleep. Well, if I kill you I can still end up on the news.” 

 

He threw his sister at their feet. He could no longer be their son.  He had to become a monster without a heart. He had to become a killer that no one could sympathize with. A killer that no one loved.  
  
  


🦔  **OH GREAT ANOTHER FLASHBACK 🦔**

 

Ever since he was young he hated looking into people’s eyes, because he saw nothing reflecting back. Well when he was a kid it was fine. If he had grown up normally the difference between himself and others would not have been such a big deal, he would have eventually learned to close the gap.  
  
But, then he looked into the eyes of a killer when he was in middle school, and he saw himself reflecting back. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Hijirihara Takumi** **  
****Talent: SHSL Copycat Killer** **  
****Mentality: Minus** **  
****Likes: Passionate Killings, Claustrophobic Spaces** **  
****Dislikes: Eye-Contact** **  
****Forbidden Action: ?????**

 

Shuuji did not like Mukuro as much as Takumi did. Takumi didn’t really understand why. She did their laundry. She came to clean up their room. When Takumi wanted a new game, or a new book, she bought them for him. Takumi got the distinct impression that Mukuro was the type to spoil her younger siblings. She helped the both of them study, though Takumi needed it far more than Shuuji did. 

 

Shuuji would smile to Mukuro’s face, and then when she left the room he would whisper to Takumi. “It would be better if she just died.” 

 

“I thought you thought murder was bad. Not that I presume to understand what other people are thinking about. Not that I care either… but please don’t think about how much you hate me okay? I can’t handle that kind of thing.”  
  
“She killed all of our classmates. If she’s able to go on living like that she must feel nothing for them at all!”  
  


Takumi did not miss his classmates at all. He loved the act of killing, but he felt nothing afterwards. A corpse was just a corpse. All of his classmates died and he did not feel sad at all. _Sorry. I can’t hate your killer. I don’t feel any anger at all._

 

He wondered if he watched Shuuji die in front of him would he be sad? Would he have hated his killer? Would he be angry? The boy who he got into fights with and punched in the face. The boy he kissed. The boy he didn’t understand. The boy who understood him when he couldn’t understand himself. 

 

Shuuji had a bad habit of putting on a happy face when he was miserable. That was why, Takumi did not notice until it was almost too late. One day when they were both being tutored by Mukuro, Shuuji muttered under his breath.  
  
“______”  
  
“Huh?” Mukuro tilted her head.  
  
“It would be better for us if you just died.” A smile spread across Shuuji’s lips. He looked so sad he wanted to cry, but he was still forcing himself to smile. “Why did you think you could help us? When you’re around other people all you do is hurt them. Just go die already and leave us alone.” 

 

“What…?”  
  
“A person like you who does nothing but hurt other people should just stop being a person altogether. Once you kill someone you’re disqualified as a human. Any person who can even think of killing someone else shouldn’t even be called human.” 

 

“Why are you saying this?” 

 

“Because you’re disgusting.”  
  
“I know. I’m fully aware of what I’ve done.”  
  
“Oh, you’re aware of it? And yet you go on living. You must have a lot of nerve.” Shuuji stood up on the table, and grabbed Mukuro by her hair. Mukuro did not fight back at all. “Do you think there’s someone out there that will like you even after you’ve revealed yourself to them? Do you actually believe someone out there will choose you?”  
  
He pulled her up by the hair and stole a knife from underneath her skirt to hold at her neck. “How dare you barge into our lives and act like you can help us! When it’s your fault! When it’s all your fault that we’re like this?” 

 

“Shuuji-kun…stop.” Takumi could not find the words. He was about to see someone get killed in front of his eyes but he was not happy at all. “You don’t want to kill her, do you?”  
  
Shuuji was holding a knife at her neck, but he was crying from one of his eyes. His appearance was lopsided, half smiling, and half in despair, just like that bear.  
  
“If you want to save, Mukuro-san swear you will never kill again!! Go back to being the kind HIjirihara-kun from before?” 

 

“...” Takumi narrowed his eyes. 

 

Mukuro simply closed her eyes accepting whatever came next.  
  
“Hijihara-kun becoming a person like this isn’t his fault. It’s all your fault that he changed. It’s… your fault that I changed.” 

 

Takumi thought he understood. He didn’t understand other people’s feelings at all, but maybe he understood. Shuuji was different. Shuuji was much kinder. He felt bad when all of their classmates died. Because he had that kindness, he had been hurt even worse by their deaths. He had been fatally wounded.  
  
Shuuji loved him. Shuuji wanted him to never be alone. Shuuji wanted to save him. Shuuji thought Takumi was a kind person. Shuuji was happiest when the two of them were together. When nobody else even looked his way, Shuuji befriended him. Shuuji held onto their memories in the past as if they were his precious treasure. Shuuji could not forgive any person who had hurt Takumi. 

  
Shuuji felt so much, so fatally, he was likely to be killed by his own emotions. Takumi could not return a single one of those feelings. It was a little bit lonely. 

  
“Stop…” Takumi rushed forward and pushed him away from Mukuro. 

 

Their knives collided.

They could not hold hands.  
This is the only way two killers could touch.  
A kiss and a punch were the same thing to them.  
They were just stunted, violent, angry, immature brats.  
  
Mukuro fell back and watched them fight. She eventually regained herself and broke them up. When he was pulled away from Takumi, Shuuji bashed his head against one of the lockers in the hall.  
  
Shuuji was probably speaking his real feelings now. “Why… why won’t you ever choose me?”

 

Takumi wished he could just say the words at the moment. Perhaps if he had just said the words that Shuuji wanted to hear, they wouldn’t have gotten into a fight. They had both lost their peaceful school days once. A murderer named Ikusaba Mukuro killed all of their classmates like it was nothing. But now, they had a chance to act like things were normal again. Even if it was a comedy, even if it was a farce, even if they were all just pretending, it was fine if they were all together right?  
  


A murderer becoming a family with the two victims she stole everything from.  
It was absurd, but at least it wasn’t boring.  
 _I’m not kind at all._  
 _Mukuro killed a bunch of people, but she’s kind._ _  
__I like kind people because they’re like you, Shuuji._  
  


Munakata Kei, a few seconds before they crossed paths with Zerozaki spoke up breaking him out of his reminiscence. “I’m fine with working with you. It’s the job of a senpai to look after his underclassmen.”  
  


  
“For a guy who only ever thinks about murder you’re really proper, huh? Hey, hey, don’t feel ashamed when you look at me okay? I can tie a tie and tuck my shirt in properly. The reason I choose to dress like this is because it’s the style, the style, okay?” 

 

“You’re a mess.”  
  
“I’m a stylish mess.”  
  
“I’ll watch you for as long as I can, but as long as you’re with me don’t kill anybody..” Munakata said, as he looked at his own reflection in the knife that he held in his hand. “A kid like you isn’t bad.”  
  
“I’m not bad? But I’m not good either right? I hate wishy washy luke-warm stuff like that. If you love me, or hate me, I’m fine either way as long as it’s not in the middle.” Hijirhara suddenly wheezed. “That was like okay, I don’t like being hated at all.” 

 

“If you became a killer I would no longer be able to stand being around you.” Munakata said, cutting straight through his chatter. “And I don’t wanna hate you.”  
  


Takumi smiled. Unlike Shuuji he almost never smiled. Maybe that was why Shuuji was so lonely. He was a bad boyfriend. No matter how happy he was being around Shuuji he could never let it show on his face. He made Shuuji insecure. But, when he started to think about murder he smiled so easily.  
  
“I’m not a playboy…”  
  
In his eyes appeared.  
The silhouette of another boy.  
He looked at the boy as if there was no one else on earth but him.  
Nobody else matters to me.  
  
“He’s the only one I want to kill.”  
  


 

🦔

 

At the present moment all three of them were going to kill each other.  
They’re all going to die before they can play my game with me.  
No fun, no fun at all.  
  


 

  
Just kidding.  
All three charged at each other, but a figure appeared in the middle. She grabbed Hitoshiki’s knife with her bare hands. She stopped Takumi’s knife by catching it in her teeth. Her foot stomped on Munakata’s hand and crushed it, preventing him from slashing upwards.  
  
Kurokami Medaka stopped all three of them at once. She was playing life with all the cheats enabled. I wonder if it was any fun for her. 

 

‘Shit fuck! Son of a bitch! Why did you stop them? This would have been perfect for my fanfiction.” Sonia complained as she jogged to catch up with them.  
  
Gundham trailed behind her. He was walking a bit slower, because underneath his black overcoat his body was still covered in bandages. “Black queen your tastes for the forbidden truly are grotesque.”  
  
“Hmm? Oh sorry, am I being weird again? I don’t really notice it. Ehe, guess that is why you are the only one who can put up with me.” 

 

“Princess! Even if the entire world were to reject you, I will still walk the forbidden path by your side.” 

  
“Don’t encourage her!” Medaka said as she threw Zerozaki to the ground and appeared behind Gundham to smack him upside the head. “Hey, Sonia-senpai. All you’ve ever wanted was to be a normal girl, right?” 

 

“I can’t even imagine it. To become a normal girl, to live as a normal girl, to walk to school with Tanaka-kun by my side every day…”  
  
“Then why is this guy your only friend?” Medaka asked, holding Gundham there by his scarf.  
  
Gundahm struggled against her and muttered under his breath. “Foolish mortal, if my strength was not sealed by the thirteenth moon then I would unleash hell upon you.” 

 

“Tanaka-kun is like… a supes cool normal classmate that all the girl’s like… the most popular boy in school.,. I can’t believe he talks to a girl like me.” Apparently Sonia was imagining herself in the starring role of some Shoujo manga.  
  
“Even I know that’s not normal.” Medaka muttered to herself. She had gotten into an argument with Kamukura, and stormed off because she wanted to be alone. Somehow, she had ended up with these two again. She wondered why. Probably because, she was no good on her own. Someone like her who could do anything with her talents only ever clung to the other people around her.

Medaka brushed her hair back behind her ear. It was getting a bit longer, she had gone three weeks without cutting it after all. Her left eye had been stitched shut by Kamukura, so the eyelid that had been cut could heal.  
  
She finished tying up the three boys who had nearly killed each other. Takumi continued talking, but Medaka tuned out most of what he said. “I don’t mind being tied up. Actually, this is kind of exhilarating. This is just like being in a locker. I feel like I’m about to discover something-”  
  
“I’m going to recommend you bottle those feelings up.” Medaka said.  
  
“Do whatever you want to me.”  
  
“I really don’t want to.”  
  
“Just keep her away from me,” Takumi said, looking over Medaka’s shoulder to see Sonia in the background.  
  
She was acting like she had met a famous television star, or an idol she loved. Zerozaki looked at her with the expression of a dead fish, a smile still playing on his lips.  
  
“I can’t believe I’d ever meet a Zerozaki in the flesh!”  
  
“You wanna meet with a Zerozaki that bad? Hey, is this chick suicidal or something?” 

  
Medaka left Takumi alone and walked over to Sonia and Gundham. “What’s he talking about? Zero what now? Isn’t that the kind of mentality Zenkichi is?” 

 

Sonia grabbed Medaka’s hands. _Oh yeah she stabbed me awhile ago and I don’t mind her getting this close at all. I’m so weird._ Medaka thought as Sonia pulled her in close.

 

 “You’re in the serial killer fandom too? I knew we were the same!” Sonia suddenly started explaining in a giddy voice all about the Zerozaki.  
  
They were a family of psycho killers.  
In this world there were those who killed for a living. There were organized families who’s family business were killing. Of these people, there were thirteen clans of particular notoriety in japan. Seven killing names, family of assassins you hired for contract killing. Six cursing names, six families that dealt in contract work for things far worse than death.  
  
The Zerozaki were not the most deadly of the killing names, or even the most feared, but they were the most eccentric. Every single Zerozaki was a wild card. They were not a bloodline or a clan devoted to killing like every other name. They were a group of people who found each other and declared themselves a family. There was not a single blood relation between the Zerozakis. 

 

The only thing uniting them was that each other them possessed a killing instinct. Each of them looked at other humans and thought only about how to kill them. Each of them had been born with this killing instinct that made it impossible to blend into society. Not a single one of them was normal, but they were all lonely, and so the Zerozaki banded together.  
  
“I don’t give a shit about any of that, though.” Hitoshiki spoke up, interrupting Sonia. “Even if I’m alone, or if people aren’t kind to me, I’m completely fine.”  
  
Feelings aren’t necessary for a killer.  
He felt nothing about killing. 

A wolf that could not get along with sheep.  
It was true he came from a family of killers, but the word family meant nothing to him. Big brother said a person who could kill their younger sibling doesn’t deserve to be called a big brother anymore. Hitoshiki thought if things had been reversed, if he was the Big bro than he would have killed his brother when he was just a baby for being too noisy.  
He didn’t give a crap about other people.  
Human failure.  
What a flattering title.  
  
That girl who had punched him in the face harder than big bro just a second ago looked him in the eye. Hitoshiki thought it was awkward, he had no idea what to do when a pretty girl was looking at him. 

 

Say, Zerozaki? What does it feel like to kill someone?  
  
“Huh?” His face was blank. He never really thought of it before. “It’s not really the kind of thing that makes you feel this way or that. I don’t really feel much of anything.”  
  
“You don’t? It doesn’t feel good, or refreshing, or anything like that?” Medaka looked like a curious child.  
  
“Listen, dumbass, what do you think I am, some kind of sicko?” It was hard to make the case that someone who wanted to cut people apart the moment he saw them was not some kind of sicko, but Zerozaki when he was not brandishing a knife, had a rather casual, laid-back attitude you almost believed him. 

 

“So, you’re not the killer then…?”  
  
“I’m innocent. I haven’t killed anybody in at least three days.”  
  
“Are you lying?”  
  
“Hey, just because I’m a serial killer doesn’t mean you can treat me like I’m some kind of suspicious character.” Apparently he considered himself very honest for a serial killer. “Well I’m not smart enough to tell lies anyway.” 

 

“Okay then, you don’t like killing people, right?” Medaka’s face suddenly went cold. Her eyes were red. They were so red that even the bloodsoaked serial killer started to get nervous. “I’ll make it so you can’t kill people anymore. You don’t need those arms and legs-”  
  
Before Medaka could raise her hand in the air, both Gundham and Sonia grabbed onto her body from behind to stop her. Perhaps they felt bad that they had played a role in driving her this far. 

 

Not that Zerozaki cared. He was a whack job, but he also had a strict rule of avoiding other whack-jobs. He knew that his own kind weren’t the most social types. 

 

“Medaka-chan, you can’t just cut other people’s limbs off, that is very rude…” Sonia scolded her.  
  
Medaka froze. She looked statuesque. A beautiful, still, statue. She could not be anything other than beautiful. Not a single ugly emotion showed on her face. Not a single human emotion showed. There was nothing human about her appearance at al.  
  
“Killers should just disappear…” Medaka muttered. “They’re not human.”  
  
Zerozaki met her red eyes with his own. This girl looked like the hero type. The type that fought for her friends, or justice, or whatever, so why did she have the exact same eyes? 

 

“Everyone would be happy if it wasn’t for you, so just disappear.” 

 

At that moment, Medaka felt Hitoshiki’s red eyes on her. ANd, that gaze was somehow full of pity. The boy born into a family of killers, was somehow pitying the princess born in a mansion.  
  
“Eh?? That’s true for your ain’t it? You who’s got nothing. Why do you look like you want me to kill you right now?” 

 

Medaka saw Nanami’s ghost. She blinked and turned around, seeing the silhouettes of her own family. They were all standing around her, simply watching, simply waiting. They all asked her, so many times, if she was sad? Was she sad her family had died?  
  
 _I don’t know._

 

She was a killer now too, and she had no idea if she regretted killing Nanami.  
  


 

  
She felt nothing. She had nothing. Nothing to protect. Nowhere to return to. Nothing to aspire to or live for. No one to ask for help. Not a one. Not a single…  
 _Reason to live._

 

That’s right she never had friends. She just wanted one person, one single person to give her a reason. She wanted them to tell her what to do, how to live, because she didn’t know herself. But her family, her own brother, her birth father, her birth mother, her six step mothers, they were all dead now.  
  
Even Zenkichi’s ghost was looking at her.  
  
 _You have no reason to stay alive,so why?_ _  
__Why are you still alive?_

  
Zenkichi sneered.  
  


 _You wanted it to end when you got launched into space didn’t you? You wanted that to be your execution, punishment, and death sentence. You wanted to give up and die. Surviving was the worst thing that could happen to you because once again…_ _  
__  
__...You’re all alone._  
  
Medaka turned her head to look at the television screens in a nearby glass window. Zenkichi was smiling onscreen, but he wasn’t smiling at her. These broadcasts were not happening concurrently, maybe the real Zenkichi was dead at this exact moment and this was only him from the past. 

 

 _Why… Why did everyone… die?_ _  
__And leave me behind…?_ _  
__Is it because I’m strong?_  
  
Zerozaki broke free from his restraints. He reached out into his vest and drew out another of his knives. At this moment killing this girl would be so easy, she looked like she was dreaming while awake, she looked like she was seeing the dead. He held the knife for a second, and then cursed.  
  
“Goddamnit.”  
  
He turned the opposite way and ran. He ran as fast as he could.  
  
“Whatever! I don’t give a crap about any of you!” 

 

🦔

 

Zerozaki Hitoshiki came to this city on a whim.  
He was the living embodiment of a whim.  
Three months ago was the last time he saw his brother. He told his brother he was going to run away from home for a little while. When his brother asked him why, Zerozaki couldn’t explain it so he said he just had a feeling.  
  
He had a feeling that someone was waiting for him in this city. He had no idea who that person was, but he wanted to meet them.  
  
He ran away from that monster girl, and that weirdo fangirl, and the guy who talked like he was still in middle school. He ran through the roads until he was too tired to run.  
  
Zerozaki liked humans. He liked humans, because otherwise he would hate them. So he decided that he liked them. However, all of the humans he met so far were all so annoying. He was glad to be a human failure if this was what other humans were like.  
  
“City of fuckin weirdos.”  
  
He said as he caught as his breath. Just as those words left his lips, like a magic spell, or maybe a curse he ended up crossing paths with someone else.  
  
Brown skin. White hair. She wore a bathing suit in the middle of the day, with only a robe thrown around her shoulders to cover herself. She walked barefoot in the middle of a city. 

  
“Yah-hah! How are ya?”  
  
Angie Yonaga greeted him with a friendly smile.  
Zerozaki’s own smile, was like a knife being drawn.  
Probably because the moment he met her eyes, he held a knife at her neck.  
  
“Guess what, you’re gonna be my hostage.”  
  
“Neat!”  
  
“What the fuck do you mean, neat?”  
  
“It is as Atua wills it.”  
  
“You could die any moment you know.”  
  
“Nyahaahahahaha! There’s no reason to carry such bad thoughts with ya! You gotta live every day like it’s bright, cheery, and fun!.. So says Atua.” 

“So you’re not gonna fight back or anything.”  
  
“Nah.”  
  
“You can still run away.”  
  
“That would hurt my feet, and I hate sweating.”  
  
“Now you just sound lazy!” Zerozaki said, stomping his feet as he held the blade at his neck. Well whatever, if she was not going to fight back that made things easy for him. As long as he had someone hostage, those weirdoes would leave him alone. “Well, whatever. Try to escape and I’ll cut you into pieces and hang up the pieces!”  
  
“Don’t worry. You can trust me.” This girl seemed to be in her own little world, and not paying much attention to the situation. 

 

Trust? 

She could trust him.  
He would cut her into pieces. He would put a knife in her back the moment she turned around.  
Trusting a serial killer was insane.  
And he had never been a normal kid. He had never been anything but a killer.  
Trust.  
Cut, rip, tear.  
Hey, hey, hey this is almost like.  
Understanding the feeling of someone else.  
Useless, crappy feelings. 

“Do you want to hold my hand so I won’t run away?”  
  
“Hell no! Keep your damn hands to yourself.”  
  
A human hand was useless to him.  
He would cut it from the wrist and sever it.  
He would cut all five fingers off.  
The only thing he needed to hold in his hand was a knife.  
  
All of these feelings were so…  
Hilarious.  
 _This chick’s hilarious._  
  
“What a riot!” 

It was a laugh, so it didn’t matter.  
If he could keep laughing, it did not hurt as much.  
He was a laughing mad killer, and therefore he didn’t have to worry about being a person.  
That was his despair, if you could call it despair.  
  
If Medaka had seen him at that moment she would have recognized the broken smile on his face. Like Kumagawa, like Komaeda.  
He smiled.  
  



	42. White Lilies

“The state is taking care of you now.”   
  
Shuuji smiled up at the man who always appeared faceless in his memories. He didn’t smile enough when he was younger, so no family took him in, now he was sure to always smile.   
  
“Don’t make them regret it-”   
  
“I won’t.”   
  
“Mh?”   
  
“When I grow up I’ll become a police officer, and help others.”   
  
“Good answer.”   
  
He didn’t remember much of his early years, but he remembered a raised fist and terror on his mother’s face. 

 

Shuuji Fujigawa rolled over on the bed. He lived in a one room apartment no bigger than six tatami mats. That was what the state funding provided with him. An adult checked on him once a month, but otherwise he cleaned and cooked food for himself.  He didn’t like wasting time. He was already a special case. He was someone who required far more care than other children his age, he knew exactly how much money it required for him to live alone like this. The adults in charge of him made him aware. So, he did not waste a single minute, he had no tv, no internet, in his spare time he read and studied, and he read through countless magazines to stay informed.   
  
At school he lied and said he was a latchkey kid. He never took anyone home, so to him it was a harmless white lie. He didn’t want the other kids to know how far behind he was. That he had to spend every second of the day studying just to catch up to everyone else.   
  
He had to grow up fast. Kids without parents did not know how to grow up, that was what the doctor had told him once, but he was going to show them they were not wrong for taking him in. He would grow up and become a policeman. He would be just like the policeman that found him in that household one day.   
  
“So tired…” It was only his first year of middle school but he had already planned what high school he wanted to attend. _I wanted to find a way to live on my own._  Oh well, study time. He could not waste the six hundred days he had between now and his graduation. He worked on the desk in the corner of his room. 

 

Whether it was getting better scores on exams or hanging out with friends, to him it was no different than grinding levels in an rpg. He invested far more time than others to clear these quests. That was why he got better results. That was all there was to it. 

 

 _I was extremely particular about my life, my grades, my public image._   
  
He wanted to become a good person. That was the pathway laid out in front of him. Make enough friends that you’re not an outcast, spend enough time once a week to maintain the relationship, always score in the top of the class, be aware of how your actions affect others. They all told him that was what would make him good. _  
_ _  
_ There were schools that used an escalator system. A middle school, which if you performed well enough guaranteed you a seat in highschool, and then if you performed well enough gave you a place in college. As long as you stayed on the escalator you would always have a place to belong. He wanted to ride life’s escalator. 

  
Shuuji checked his phone as he walked to school. _Murderer attacks random people on the street. 14 victims accounted for._ Those who could not obey the rules of life only caused troubles for others. Shuuji was so far behind, but even if he lived alone, even if the sight of an adult’s hand brought him nothing but bad memories he still wanted to be a kind person. He could not forgive other people who thought it was alright to hurt others just because they were blind to the rules of this world.   
  
_If they can’t ride the escalator up. Then just fall down the stairs and leave everyone else alone._   
  
When he was with his friends he spoke with them. Everyone around him knew him as a cheerful boy. They said he was always laughing. Shuuji didn’t really know if that was true, he could never hear himself, his own laughter, when he laughed. Somebody would tell a joke about what they saw on television, and Shuuji laughed way too loud, even though he didn’t have a tv and had no idea what they were talking about.   
  
“Hey, hey, hey, are you serious?”   
“Come on man, Shuuji’s never serious!” 

 

Yeah. That was his problem.   
He caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the window and could not believe this boy was having so much fun.   
_Whose feelings are these?_ _  
_ _Why am I laughing so hard?_ _  
_ _That’s not me._ _  
_ _I’m not the one laughing._   
  
  


Here’s a tip to make people like you. Say the things they want to hear. Always listen to their stories, because they’re more interesting than yours. That was the only way he knew how to communicate with others.   
  
There was one kid in his class that did not know the rules at all. Hijirihara, they met on the first day of middle school and Shuuji was not interested in him at first. But then he saw how abysmally he interacted with others and Shuuji got the sense that this kid would definitely be bullied, or excluded if someone did not become his friend. _This kid would die without me._ When Shuuji thought that he felt a warmth in his chest for the first time. Ever since that day he started to hang around Takumi.   
  
_It feels good having someone to protect._   
  
Six hundred more days until high school. Then he could stop pretending to be so immature, and act a bit more mature. Shuuji thought he could see his whole future ahead of him, but one day was all it took to destroy it. 

 

Shuuji stepped out of a blood stained locker. He had managed to protect Takumi, but not a single other person in his school was alive. He had survived intact somehow. He survived without being broken. He wasn’t broken. His parents hadn’t broken him. That killer didn’t break him. He was still whole. He could still grow up.   
  
“We have to get out of here, Hijirihara-kun…” 

 

He stepped forward, only to step on the body of the class representative. The two of them had been close friends. At least he was friends with the popular, carefree Shuuji who was always laughing.   
  
He saw the corpse on the floor move in front of him. “Class rep…? You’re alive…!?”   
  
“Fujigawa you were saying you want to become a police officer, huh?”   
  
“Y-yeah, but don’t talk. I’m going to call for help.”   
  
Shuuji kept talking like everything was normal. It was the only thing he could think to do, because if it wasn’t normal then he would start to break-   
  
The class rep raised his head slowly. Both of his eyes were guaged out. It looked like someone had taken a drill to his head, inserted it directly into his eyeballs, and then mixed the flesh until it ripped out of his eye socket. His mouth was just a third hole in his face. There were no teeth left, as if someone had plucked every single tooth out and only the gums remained, still bleeding. There was no longer anything resembling a nose on his face, the surface was completely smooth and white. The three holes torn in his face bled. They bled black. When he opened his mouth again, all that fell out was black ink.   
  
“Why didn’t you save me?”   
  
He looked like a vengeful spirit.   
No.   
He looked like he was crying.   
  
“Why?”   
  
Shuuji realized in that moment it was already broken.   
He didn’t need to even ask why. He knew the answer.   
Shapeless spawn. Automatic failure. Disqualified from humanity.   
From the start it was always going to break.   
  
“I feel sorry for you…”   
  
Shuuji raised his foot in the air. He brought it down and stomped hard on the face he saw in front of him. He stomped, stomped, stomped, stomped, the sound of bones breaking did nothing to deter him.   
  
“Just please… rest in peace already.” 

 

 _Are you on your dad’s side?_   
  
His mother asked him.   
He remembered delicate fingers on his face. The only person he ever allowed to truly touch him. He had not been touched in years, he kept his distance from others. From a distance he was, vague, indistinct, nothing more than a white blur.   
  
_Or are you on my side?_ _  
_ _You can’t choose both. You have to  choose either one._   
  
He did not even know if his mother was alive any more. When he became an adult, he wanted to see her again one day and tell her that he grew up just fine. That it was okay, because she did her best. He couldn’t tell her that now. He had just killed someone in cold blood.   
  
Takumi crawled out of the locker. That boy looked up and saw Shuuji’s trmebling back as he retched in disgust at what he had done. “Hey, Shuuji? Why did you kill the class rep?” He asked like it was casual conversation, like they were still two best friends sitting on the rooftop together.   
  
“I didn’t kill him?”   
  
“Huh? Pretty sure you did. Crushing someone’s brain like that usually kills them. Well except for me, I barely use my brain anyway so I’d probably be able to keep living without it.”    
  
“Did you know, Hijirihara-kun?”

 

 _Why? Why? Why?_ _  
_ Why had they all died in the room? Why could he who wanted to grow up to be a police officer not protect a single person?   
There was such an obvious answer. The class rep was stupid for blaming him.   
They all died because a villain did it. 

  
Shuuji pulled his fingers through his hair as he turned around to face Takumi, dying white flowers red. “If you kill people, that makes you a bad guy. But… if you kill your enemies. That makes you a hero.”   
  
He wasn’t the villain of this tale.   
He was going to be the hero.   
  
“Don’t say something so depressing.”” Takumi lectured him suddenly. Shuuji felt a hand on his head, and the boy he thought he was protecting suddenly became the only support he could lean against as Shuuji’s legs collapsed from under him. “It’s fine Shuuji. I killed class rep too. If you’re a killer than so am I.”   
  
In that moment Shuuji realized.   
He was the one who could not live without Takumi. 

 

 _Are you on Mukuro’s side, or are you on my side?_ _  
_ _You have to choose. Either one._

 

🧸  
  
Shuuji finished his reminiscing as he arrived in front of the ruined cram school building. He ascended to the fourth floor, when Juzo stopped him in front of Munakata’s door asking him who the hell he was Shuuji simply raised up the suitcase he had been carrying by his side. Juzo standing behind his shoulder, glaring at him with suspicion he opened the suitcase in front of the barely conscious Munakata.   
  
“First year high school student Fujigawa Shuuji. The original killer killer. Let’s make a deal.” 

  
  
  


**Fujigawa Shuuji** **  
****Talent: SHSL Vigilante Killer** **  
****Likes: Closed Spaces, Fashion Magazines** **  
****Dislikes: Murder**   
  
“Hey, should you be listening to this kid?” Sakakura worried behind him. 

 

 **Sakakura Juzo** **  
****Talent: SHSL Boxer** **  
****Likes: Sparring, Sweet Foods** **  
****Dislikes: Bitter Foods** **  
****Forbidden Action: Cannot throw a punch**   
  
“Do you kill for despair?” 

  
“Kill for despair?” Shuuji seemed offended by the implication. “Murder is the worst possible crime against humanity. The moment someone gives into their own emotions and kills, they forfeit all rights as a person.”   
  
“Good answer, boy.”   
  
“Munakata, he’s a kid! He doesn’t know what he's talking about.”   
  
“Sakakura. He’ll be helpful if I use him right.”  Munakata folded his pale hands together. He looked like an unbreakable wall. An impenetrable front in wartime. Sakakura could not even read the slightest flicker of emotion in his best friend’s face.   
  


**Munakata Kyosuke** **  
****Talent: SHSL Student Council President** **  
****Likes: Discipline, Tamagoyaki** **  
****Dislikes: Chaos, Greasy Foods** **  
****Forbidden Action: ?????**   
  
“It’s not a matter of trusting him or not. Even faced with the Killer Killer I will not tremble.” 

 

The boy in front of him had no fallen to despair. No, he was already at a point far beyond despair. After you give up on hope, or despair, nothing else remains. You become a person capable of doing anything. White lilies expressed innocent, but they were flowers that only bloom for those who were already dead. 

  
You don’t fight for anything. You don’t have anyone. All you have is fighting itself.   
  
No matter where he looked Munakata saw those funeral flowers. They were always springing up at his feet. He was always, always, always, too late. He could not prevent a single person from dying.   
  
And yet, he was still alive. He kept on living. One day he realized why he could not be killed. He was already dead in a sense. He couldn’t protect anyone. He couldn’t make his friends happy. There was no hope for somebody like him, but that was fine, because even a hopeless individual was capable of wielding a sword in his hand and destroying despair. 

  
“Awe, but I wanted you to trust me sensei. I was going to even be a tattle tale so I’d get special treatment and everything.” Shuuji said, a smile still on his lips.   
  
He just thought that flowers that bloomed white should stay white forever.   
  
That’s right he didn’t want to grow up. He never wanted to grow up. He just wanted to stay with his middle school friends a little bit longer. His own white hair, and Munakata’s too, both of them longing for a purity that didn’t exist anywhere in this filthy filthy world. 

 

“I know Yukizome-sensei’s secret!”   
  
Hey, hey.   
Why is innocence only associated with people who are already dead?   
Is there really not a single person alive who has managed to remain innocent?   
Children either die innocent flowers, or grow up into sick adults. 

 

🧸 **  
  
**

Munakata had stormed out of his hospital room. He was still covered in bandages underneath the white coat he wore, and half of his face was bandaged up as well.  
Chisa smiled at him when she saw him.   
There were tears in her eyes.   
All she wanted was for the people she loved to remain happy and healthy.   
Munakata reached out a hand for her.   
  
He slammed her so hard against the wall he could hear the plaster crack. He brought his sword and leveled it centimeters away from her neck.   
  
“Tell me he’s lying.” 

 

The day after the 77th class appeared to commit group suicide and disappear, he found Chisa crying alone. A playground on fire. The children who were playing there dead on the ground. Their corpses were beginning to melt. Their forms distorted, they no longer looked human.   
  


  
Chisa never once cried. No matter how much trouble Munakata caused her, she had never gotten angry with him, never confided in him, and Munakata realized why in that moment. Chisa only ever cried for the sake of other people. Her own pain was never enough reason to bring her to tears.   
  
That day Munakata decided any world so fragile it allowed children to fall through the cracks, should fall to pieces. That day a world was destroyed. Munakata had to fight. He had to destroy. The despair that killed these children. If he did nothing it would be like he was their killer.   
  
The one who killed these children…   
The one who killed these children was…   
  
“Yukizome-sensei.” Shuji’s voice echoed in his ears. “She’s kind of a bad teacher, huh?” 

 

“Hmm?” Yukizome playfully smiled. Being hated, and being loved by Munakata was the same to her. He looked at her like she was the only other person on earth. Being this close to him made her heart race. The violent way he grabbed her, the way he held her like he never wanted to let go. “Ky-o-suke. Should I die by this bracelet? Or should I have you kill me? Which would be more fun?”  
  
“Fun?” Munakata’s voice cracked. He looked like he wanted to topple. He was a great stone statue waiting for his arms and legs to fall off. He could not move in that moment because his white skin was made of marble.   
  
“Fun, I meant to say heartbreaking.”   
  
“You told me all you’ve ever wanted was kids of your own to take care of. How… how could you kill somebody else’s kids?”   
  
“Because they weren’t my kids I guess.” 

 

“Wha?”  
  
“Because they were in the way. That’s what you do isn’t it? You kill people who are in the way of hope?” 

 

“What’s wrong with you? Are you saying that killing them wasn’t bad?”   
  
“No, way.” Chisa’s eyes widened. At the center of her eyes was Munakata. He was the only thing she was seeing. “I did a very bad thing.” 

  
  


She thought the distance between their faces was a terrible thing. He was centimeters away, too far away. She could barely see his face from that distance. She started to lean forward, desperate to close the gap between them.   
  
“I did the worst thing. Yes.”   
  
Their faces must have been shaped to fit perfectly together. Munakata’s lips were so cold, she thought she might get stuck there as she kissed him. She wanted to kiss him more and more, even if it meant she might slowly freeze to death. She wanted to die from kisses.   
  
“I’m terrible.” She whispered into their kiss.   
  
Munakata pushed her away. His face looked like he wanted to vomit. He wiped the spit from his lips. 

 

“You can’t forgive me, can you?” 

 

“Chisa.”   
  
All she wanted was for him to call her by her first name.   
She wanted that person to stop pushing her away.   
  
“You’re not Chisa.”   
  
“..Yeah.”   
  
So that’s all it took for her to no longer be Chisa.   
If she wasn’t kind, she’s not Chisa.   
If she’s not always paying attention to him, she’s not Chisa.

If she’s not perfectly innocent, she’s not Chisa.  
If she’s not someone who can be saved by him, she’s not Chisa.   
_If he won’t call me Chisa, I’m not myself._

 

Chisa just smiled at him, as Munakata gripped his sword. The whole world was spinning. Munakata was the center of her world, he was her gravity, without him it was just vertigo. Her eyes were spinning, black, and white. She had always wondered about the boy with the fluffy white hair in her class, were these the eyes he saw the world through?   
  
“I wanted you to save me.”   
  
Chisa looked at his pale face, his perfectly delicate features. She wanted to trace her fingers around every groove of his face, she wanted to remember the shape and form in exact detail. 

Chisa could not give a clear answer for her actions even if she wanted to.  
  
Maybe.   
  
She just wanted to do something that would make her no longer Yukizome Chisa.   
  
She wanted that always kind, always smiling  woman to go die already. 

 

Suddenly, a chair smashed into Munakata’s head from behind. Sakakura knocked Munakata out of the way, and went to pick up Chisa. Before she could even realize what was happening, she was thrown over his shoulder.   
  
“Wouldn’t you rather have Kyosuke be the one to carry you away like a princess? You’ve got this scene all wrong.” 

 

“Go to hell.” Juzo said as he turned around to face the recovering Munakata.   
  
“Hey, Sakakura…You’ve been with me since we were students, haven’t you?”   
  
“Y-yeah.”   
  
“Those were good times. You were there. Yukizome was there. All we had to do was keep going forward, toward our ideals.”   
  
“Yeah, I believed in your ideals too. I always thought supporting you was my job. That’s why I can’t let you-”   
  
It seemed Munakata was not going to let him explain himself. All Juzo wanted was for Munakata to wake up again, to smile at him again, to talk just like the old days. But now the two of them were both far beyond words.   
  
“Hey, Sakakura.” 

 

Munakata raised his sword in the air.   
  
“There’s something I have to tell you.”   
“I gotta come clean about what a shithead I’ve been..”   
  
Sakakura took a fighting stance.   
  
“I’ve always…”   
“I’ve always…” 

  
Juzo’s blade crossed with Sakakura’s hulking body. Sakakura had no choice, he had to catch it in his hand with brute strength alone. He could not go on the attack carrying Chisa, he had to protect.   
  
“Hated you.”   
“Loved you.”   
  
Sakakura wrapped his fingers around Munakata’s sword, feeling his own hand get sliced open and lubricated by the blood. His hand moved down the shaft as he tried to force it back.   
  
“The hell are you doing? I thought the reason you acted like such a cold bastard was because you wanted to protect us? Who the hell are you protecting now? Who are you fighting for?” Juzo screamed. Juzo raged. “The hell with it! The hell with it! The hell with it!”   
  
Two of his fingers were sliced off.   
He didn’t care anymore. 

His talent. His self-worth. Himself. 

Munakata. Munakata. Munakata.  
Munakata’s beautiful features, his transparent skin like glass.   
He wanted to shatter it.   
  
“If you all you give a shit about is fighting then fine, I’ll go to war with you.”   
  
Juzo said as he dodged Munakata’s sword swing. He spun his body around and threw his weight at the window, breaking through it. He grabbed the fire escape with his still bleeding three-fingered hand, and landed as he started to flee with Chisa in tow.   
  


“Hmm, why are you betraying Kyosuke for my sake? I bet if you acted like a damsel in distress Kyosuke would come running to save you.”   
  
“Shut the hell up! You’re my friend too! A guy can have more than one friend.”   
  
The two of them bantered like old friends while they were running for their lives.   
  
“Sides, I think something is seriously wrong with Munakata. He’s been repressing his feelings for so long that they’re taking control of him-”   
  
“Isn’t it out of character to suddenly be that smart?”   
  
“I got my master’s in psychology, and a minor in child development!”   
  
“Huh?”   
  
“A fallback if the whole world professional boxer thing didn’t work out, and Munakata told us we were going to spend the rest of our lives working for him at a school. The hell did you think I went to college for?”   
  
“Umm… to get a degree in punching people?”   
  
“I will drop you.”   
  
“Please do. You sweat so much when you run. It stinks.” 

  
Munakata fell to his knees. Shuuji watched behind him, still smiling. He looked at the sword in his hands, the one that had just cut apart Sakakura and tried to kill Chisa. He looked at his hands as if they belonged to someone else. 

 

 _Sakakura._ _  
_ _No matter what I said. You always stuck by me._ _  
_ _You two are the only reason I’m still alive._   
  
His right and his left hand. He had wanted to hold each of them in his two hands. He did not need the world, he just wanted a world where he could smile together with those two. So, why did he? 

 

 _I took the thing most precious to me and destroyed it._   
  
“Where are you going…?” Munakata’s voice cracked as his sword fell out of his hands. He just kept muttering it to himself long after they both were gone. He reached for the hands that were no longer there, because he had cut them apart and severed them at the wrist. “Don’t leave me alone.” 

 

🧸

 

Kurokami felt angry. It was like lava pouring out from the cracks in her heart, and causing her insides to boil. She felt the bile in her stomach turn into steam. The pressure in her body was rising too much, her forehead was going to crack, her eyeballs were going to pop out of her skull.   
  
She was on fire. It was a strange sensation, burning. She could feel it in her skin, but she also could no longer feel her skin. She felt immeasurable pain, but then her nerve endings burned off and she felt nothing. 

  
  


She exhaled fire. It was like acid, burning the roof of her mouth, her tongue, her lips. There was nothing pleasant about swallowing it down, and nothing good came from spitting it up. As it traveled down her throat it was like fire ants crawling and biting on the inside of her esophagus. The flames were feasting on her. She was nothing but sustenance for them.  
  
She was angry. She stopped having all other feelings. She became nothing more than a person capable of anger. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs before they burned away. _Who hurt me? Who hurt me?_   
  
Anger was a cry of agony of her. Medaka’s anger was so great, she felt like she had never felt anything in her life before this point. She was empty, before this anger came to fill her up. There was nothing inside of her, no organs, no bones, just kindling for a fire. 

 

 _Who hurt me?_ She had to be angry, because if she was not she would feel guilty. Medaka once loved everyone because she wanted just one person to love her. Now, she was angry at everyone because she wanted just one person to tell her it was not her fault. 

  
Gundham and Sonia both tried to hold her back, but she had pushed them away for the time being. “Hey, who hurt me?” She asked out loud, this time she got an unexpected master.   
  
“Oh, that was probably me. That’s my job as your enemy after all, a-hya, hya…” 

  
Medaka heard the voice of someone laughing.   
A clown was laughing at her.   
She turned her head around and with a sharp glare saw Shiranui Hansode.   
  
“I was looking everywhere for you…”   
  
“Oh, well I didn’t want to be found.”   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“Because I don’t like you, duh!” 

  
Medaka turned around. She was staring at Shiranui, but for some reason she looked like she was somewhere far behind the eyes on her face. “You’re not really the mastermind are you, but you’re cooperating with her.”   
  
“Oh, wow. Are you thinking? I hope you don’t hurt yourself too much.”   
  
“Why are you choosing her side? Even though she killed my family, why...” Medaka said, distant. She felt like she was screaming at Shiranui across a canyon.   
  
“You’re supposed to be a genius, why do you always ask such stupid questions?” Shiranui suddenly stepped forward like a spotlight was shining from the heavens just on her. “Quiz time! What’s the difference between Kumagawa Misogi and Kurokami Medaka? What makes one a hero and the other a villain?” 

  
“I…”   
  
“Bzzt! The answer is, one of them has their hands clean! That’s the only difference between good and evil people care about. It’s just whoever’s done the least bad things.” Shiranui held two fingers up in the air. “Question two, how was the Kurokami Syndicate able to stay a good and noble  family?”   
  
“I don’t…”   
  
“Bzzt! The answer is, they foisted all of their dirty work on the Shiranui family. Assassinations, sex, money, lies, the tree stays clean because it’s roots are digging around in the dirt.” Shiranui held up a third finger. “Question three, why am I so short?”   
  
“To make your character design cute.”   
  
“Bzzzt! The answer is recessive genetics with a side of malnutrition.”  Shiranui kept counting on her fingers, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. “Kurokami. Matsuda. Kuguruki. Kotobuki. Momozono. Nienami. Kanaino. Yuzuriha. The main family, the seven branch families, and then the ninth family Shiranui. All of those branches and the roots, only existed to support the main tree. So the Kurokami controlled everything about them. Who they married, their children, and also how much money they had.”   
  
“I never told you what to do. I never tried to control you.”   
  
“Nanami-san was soo stupid. She wasn’t cursed or anything. She just had an immune disorder. That’s common in our village, oh Munakata-sensei is suffering from a similar condition. Do you know why it appeared in both of them? Recessive genetics.”   
  
“I would have never wished that on Nanami-san. I had nothing to do with the branch families. I didn’t want anything to do with my own family.” 

  
“Hey, Medaka-chan have you ever played RPGs?”   
  
“No.”   
  
“You know the final boss, it’s usually a demon lord or something. The hero becomes the hero by slaying the demon lord. Let’s say the demon lord had a daughter, who was spoiled, and completely unaware of what her father was doing.”   
  
“No I…”   
  
“The demon’s lord’s daughter is ignorant.”   
  
“I don’t…”   
  
“You could even call her innocent.”   
  
“I can’t…”   
  
“She’s pure and clean. Pure white.” 

  
“I never.”   
  
“But could you still call her a hero?”   
  
Medaka stopped trying to explain herself.  
  
"Hey, hey, hey, you're doing terrible on this quiz show! The audience is booing you! Aren't you supposed to be smart?"   
  
Medaka said nothing.   
  
She was just not that good at talking. She could barely understand her own feelings, and the feelings of other people around her were nothing but waves that bombarded her. They were sensations that overwhelmed her.   
  
Waves hit her from every side. She just wanted some stand to stand on. She wanted ground beneath her feet. But, the water would just wash the sand away. Medaka turned around and saw behind her.   
  
For a moment she thought the girl standing there was her own childhood self, but she recognized the red hair. It was Enoshima Junko, middle school age, wearing red pigtails, she was small and cute and her eyes were glassy just like a dolls   
  
She was a child that looked very loved. She was someone who was loved too much. It was like pouring too much water on a floor, the roots will rot and the plant would die. She stood there on the water perfectly, her feet not sinking.   
  
“Why are you holding yourself back?”   
  
The Junko who spoke to her looked just like a little girl. There was no despair in her eyes, just a childlike innocence. Those eyes so large, so curious. So empty. Medaka saw herself reflecting red in those eyes. A bloodstained mirror. It was the first time she had ever looked into a mirror and thought _yeah, this is me._   
  


“You want to destroy everything. You’re just like me, right?”   
  
“No.” 

“Oh my god quit the good girl act! Who are you doing it for anymore? Who does it benefit?”  
  
“...You’re not real. I’m not going to let my emotions rule me. I’m not like you, I’m not going to despair to make myself feel better.”   
  
“Oh, you’re so much better than me! You’re so much better than everyone! That’s why you’re always alone in the end, the lowly mortals just aren’t good enough for you. You’re too cool for that crowd.”   
  
Always alone.   
_Why am I always left behind?_  
That child disappeared as another wave of emotion struck her, and buried her.   
Medaka reached forward towards Shiranui, but she was too beaten by the waves and she fell forward.   
  
She wanted the sun to expand so much that it lit the surface of the earth on fire. She wanted the oxygen in the atmosphere to combust at the same time. She wanted the oceans to boil. When Medaka looked up through blurry eyes, she saw Sonia had caught up to her. The older girl had her head in her lap. She cried until she dried up.   
  
The world should just end while she was still aware.   
She wanted to turn her head and look back as the city was destroyed even though god told her not to.   
She wanted to become a pillar of salt, and dissolve into the sea. 


	43. Black Dahlia

Matsuda locked himself away from the others.    
He was in the same supply closet that Kamukura kept the pile of haphazard pile of boxed television screens. Just when it felt like he could finally breathe every single television turned on at once. It was as if someone, somewhere had the remote in their hands and pressed a button.    
  
An event had been triggered. A flag was raised. Matsuda saw skin, doll-like flesh, and it took a moment for him to process those two tied up closer than a parasite that had dug its teeth into its host. Junko and Kumagawa’s love scene. Matsuda felt himself leaving his body, as if he was actually there with them, observing from a third person view. When Junko’s eyes turned towards the camera for a minute he felt exposed. Junko did not even know if he was alive or dead, but she must have known he was there far away, watching her like some creep. She could probably hear the sound of his heart beating. And after she caught a glimpse of him, the first thing she did was turn away from him and kiss Kumagawa’s face as if she were trying to suffocate herself with him.    
  
When he was just an invisible child, Junko was the one who saw him. When he was lost, she found him. Matsuda did not trust his reflection in the mirror. The only person who could see Matsuda Yasuke for what he truly was, was Enoshima Junko.    
  
But he hated the way he reflected in her eyes now. He was just a stranger now. He was baggage. He was her regret. He was a fleeting memory. He was a dream she would forget when she cried upon waking.    
  
Apparently, Matsuda hated dating simulators as much as I do. When he found himself back in his body, as if he had been forcibly dragged there, a rude awakening, he looked up to see every single television screen in the room smashed. He looked down to his bare hands to see his knuckles bloodied, bruised, and glass shards sticking out of his hands.    
  
“Yup. That was a perfectly sane response. No problems here.”   
  
Nobody said anything in response.   
  
“Shut up, I’m a head doctor. What do you even know?” 

 

Well I hope Matsuda knows that even if nobody else appreciates his sense of humor, I do.    
  
The first time Matsuda buried a corpse he noticed the fact that someone was dead in front of him did not bother him as much as he thought it would. He looked at the corpse of the old man in front of him, and for a moment he saw Junko’s own lifeless body. When she slept, she was like a doll, perfectly still, so much so Matsuda occasionally grew fearful she would never wake up. When he saw her eyes flit open every muscle in his body relaxed. Every time she woke it was like she was being reanimated, he watched her whole body come to life. 

 

As he stared at her corpse-like sleep he sometimes wondered what he would ever do if that doll-like girl broke. He would probably steal organs from freshly buried graves and sew them into her until she was the shape of someone who would love him in return. 

 

In the novel there was no difference betweent he man and the monster. Matsuda wondered when he had died… and how it had happened without him even noticing. He died, but he didn’t die. He died but he continued on even though his flesh was so, so cold. Even though he felt nothing when he touched another person. He felt nothing burying a grave for this old man. When he saw Junko’s dead body in that man’s place, he seemed completely expedable.    
  
It was like his heart could be flipped on and off with a switch. It was like his nerves were no longer his. The reason his heart still beat was because Junko’s fingers curled around it, squeezed it hard. Junko’s nails had dug all the way into the meat of his brains, and grasped a bundle of nerves, and tied them into knots.    
  
For him love was a parasitic fungus who grew in the moisture filled cavities of his brain, pushed its roots into the back of his eyeballs, and took over the control of his body. However, it was a cruel parasite. If love killed him he might have been happy. Worse was being forced to live, as a hollowed out copy of yourself, a parasite zombie, a shambling corpse. No matter how much you hate yourself, no matter how much you’ve come to hate them, you continue living, you live by loving them. 

 

If there was anything that bothered him about getting rid of the body that day it was the smell. The smell clung to him the rest of the day even after he had taken every measure to sterilize himself and the scene of the crime.    
  
Matsuda had rushed to the showers in the biology lab without thinking. He carelessly tossed his shirt on the floor and stepped out of his pants. His ribs were visible through his skin. Oily black hair fell onto his shoulders, the raven coloring of his hair made his skin look even paler. He wondered when the colors had drained out of his flesh. He wondered when the vampire’s fangs had dug in. He set the water as cold as it could go and let it fall on him. This rotten stench that clung to him like the memory of an old lover. It was his fault for letting himself sink into the swamp. He was the one who was afraid of letting that girl sink alone.    
  
He felt himself beginning to sink. He looked down at his own skin, and saw blue veins underneath the surface of his wrist. Those veins suddenly moved, they writhed around in his own flesh like they were tree roots spreading. A parasite, a parasite crawling around between the layers of skin.    
  
He started to scratch at his skin. As if he was trying to clean off the dirt that clung to him from the grave he had just burned with just his nails. He tried to cut his skin above where the roots were growing, so he could rip them out from underneath his flesh. 

  
The water had pooled on the floor, and Matsuda saw a little kid. He had dark black hair, and a bad attitude. What a brat. Oh wait, that was him.    
  


_ “You don’t like being alone.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ Matsuda said nothing.    
  
_ “Everyone’s relying on you right now, but you feel lonely. Is that your heart?”  _

 

Matsuda said nothing.    
  
_ “You must have noticed it, but you pretend like you didn’t notice it. That, you have such an ugly heart.”  _   
  
“Ugly…?”   
  
_ “Your heart. You saw that girl abuse her sister and you were happy, weren't you? It made it feel like she chose you. You found the other twin hateful, didn’t you? You want her to see only you..”  _   
  
It felt good to be relied on. Even if that job was burying corpses, if he was the only one Junko could rely on to do it, that thought made his heartbeat quicken. If it hadn’t been an old man, if it had been a kid his own age, or even younger, Matsuda still would have buried him. He was just like those doctors who were so self involved they could not care about the feelings of one little boy who had just lost his mother. No wonder his younger self looked at him with such disappointment.    
  


“I…”   
  
_ “I grew up into such an ugly adult.”  _

 

『Yasuke-chan, can you wash my front?』   
  
“You’re supposed to ask me to wash your back, and no either way. People as ugly as you should be considerate and bathe when nobody else is around.”

 

『Yasuke-chan, is so kind, always thinking of other people first.』   
  
Yasuke was a little busy slowly losing his mind, but of course that idiot had to interrupt him. Kumagawa Misogi, a loudmouth who said whatever he wanted. He was a useless person. It went beyond a level of the talented and untalented, Kumagawa was simply incompetent. He could not help a single person, he could not even help himself. 

 

Kumagawa suddenly stepped in front of him into his shower stall. He was so close, it was like the borders between people did not exist for Kumagawa at all. There was barely any space at all between their chests. 

  
Kumagawa’s chest rose and fell. It looked like breathing was an act of agony for him. His shoulders shook, like they could cave in at any moment, they were begging for collapse.  The slightest movement stretched and wrinkled the scars that criss crossed across his fest. They were the roots of an aged tree, spreading all across his body. Those scars bloomed, like black and red flowers. His entire body was a garden, and it was so inviting to roll around in it.    
  


There was no one on earth who could possibly find that ugly child attractive. His limbs were thin, and his joints like swollen knobs. Kumagawa just naturally had the appearance of a child who had been locked in the basement for several days without showering. His hair was tangled and matted, shaggy, it looked impossible to comb through. The water that made it fall down over his face just made it even more of a mess. 

 

His every bone was invisible underneath his transparent skin, as if his bones had been shrink wrapped. He was so misshapen and bent that whatever toymaker that had put his body together, must have loathed him.    
  
But there was a fragility to him. The nape of his neck, the way his collar bone was pronounced, his hips so narrow they could easily snap. The shallow curves of his body looked like they were wanting to be gently touched. It was a body that longed to be held closed. His lips were almost white, bloodless.    
  
Matsuda’s eyes closely watched the water water dripped down Kumagawa’s body. It followed the scars like a series of canals scratched onto the surface of his body. The concave way his collar bones dipped into his chest, the well defined curve of his body, his perfectly flat stomach. Matsuda’s eyes dipped below Kumagawa’s belly, Kumagawa did not look ashamed at all to be seen naked. He had never seen anyone more comfortable in his own body. His hands were on his hips, he was standing with both hips jutted out.    
  
Kumagawa’s dark blue eyes. So wet.    
Just looking into them made Matsuda’s eyes water.    
Kumagawwa who concealed nothing, who never tried to hide. Matsuda could see his heart beating inside of his rib cage, he was so close he could almost feel its rhythm.    
  
It was like having two hearts in the same chest. Kumagawa’s in his own. Both of them fighting to move blood through Matsuda’s body. The loudness of Kumagawa’s beating heart was drowning out all of his other thoughts. 

  
Kumagawa’s eyes. He had blue eyes.   
Matsuda’s own reflection on the surface of the water.   
Eyes that accepted everything about him.    
Eyes that merely allowed him to exist.    
Clean water, without any impurities.    
Picasso’s blue period.   
Monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green only.    
_ I don’t get what’s so good about picasso’s drawings. _ _   
_ _ I don’t know why they’re considered one of the greatest art pieces ever. _ _   
_ _ I don’t get it. _ _   
_ _ I bet I could draw them myself.  _   
Pure, distilled, blue.    
  
Kumagawa was ugly, and yet he was impossible to look away from. Those eyes were an infinitely deep ocean that he could never escape from once he started sinking, even if he swam to the surface with everything he had.    
  
He saw Kumagawa’s head dip towards him. His entire body looked like it might crash against him, like a wave. Matsuda suddenly felt angry. “Stay away from me!” 

 

『Why? You take a strange dislike to anyone drawing within a certain distance.』   
  
Kumagawa however, backed away the moment he was asked. He looked like he would never touch someone who was afraid to be touched.    
  
“Nah, I’m a pretty popular guy. I have tons of friends, you just haven’t met them. My heart is overflowing with love. I just can’t stand you.” 

 

『You use such long winded insults when you get worked up.』   
  
“You were probably excluded a lot when you grew up, right? If you fell down on the side of the road, nobody even looked your way.” 

 

『Yep!』   
  
“Good. People like you deserve to be excluded and ignored. They were doing a public service.”  

 

『You’re so excitable, Yasuke-chan. Did something good happen?』   
  
“Nothing good has happened ever since I met you. I had a pretty shitty life already, and you somehow managed to make it worse. You’re a goddamn artist.” 

 

『Oh gosh, I’m such a clutz. I tripped on my shoe lace and ruined Yasuke-chan’s entire life.』

  
“No, you’re just unneeded. Have you considered doing all of us a favor and offing yourself? Maybe you’ll be reborn as someone useful in the next life.” 

 

『Hey, hey Yasuke-chan you’re doing everything you can to reject me, but umm… since I’m such a failure I kind of hate seeing other people try so hard.』   
  
“What do you mean?”

 

『I mean um, you’re telling me to go away but if I actually listened you’d probably feel sad immediately afterwards.』   
  
“Don’t you dare leave, I’m not done hating you yet.” 

 

『You weirdo. Why do you clutch and grasp at people if you hate them so much?』

  
“It’s not weird. It’s normal. Nobody wants someone like you around. Nobody would be happy that someone they don’t like is drawing closer.” 

 

『You don’t like me?』   
  
“The moment you leave this academy I think I might actually smile for the first time in my life.” Matsuda drew even closer to Kumagawa’s face, until Kumagawa was the only thing he could see. “I just killed someone and all I could think about was how much more satisfying it would have been if you were the person I killled, then you might actually shut the fuck up for once in your life. But nah, you’d probably still keep running your mouth even after you were-”

 

『Can I touch you?』   
  
“I don’t give a shit-”

 

Matsuda was surprised.    
Kumagawa suddenly threw his arms around him.   
Kumagawa’s whole body trembled, he heard a hitch and a sob. It was like Kumagawa’s barely oiled, rusted over joints were being forced into motion, the weight of it all way making Kumagawa’s body cry out in agony. 

 

『You’re crying aren’t you, Yasuke-chan?』   
  
“S-shut up. If I am it’s only because of how ugly you are..”  

 

『Yasuke-chan is such a crybaby. I’m sorry I didn’t notice. I didn’t see how much you wanted to cry.』

  
Kumagawa who 2ould beat someone half to death with a smile on his face was being apologizing for being insensitive. Water was leaking out of those blue eyes. He could hear the sounds Kumagawa made as his eyes were still fixed forward. Kumagawa, whose entire body had been cut, who had a deep wound in his chest that exposed his still beating heart, he never thought any of that pain was a good enough reason for him to cry.    
  
But that day he cried for Matsuda’s sake. He cried because Matsuda couldn’t.

  
  


🧸

  
  


When Emukae found Matsuda he was picking glass shards out of his hands, and sewing them up. Most of the wounds were superficial, scratches that did not cut too deep. The sound of rain outside inevitably brought him back to his days with Kumagawa. For that boy it was always raining, there was no relief, no shelter. 

 

_ Then what about me?  _   
  
“What about you, Matsuda-kun. Don’t you think about yourself a little bit too much?” Emukae asked him suddenly.

 

“No, if you ask me I’m too generous and kind-hearted for putting up with idiots like you all the time.” 

 

Emukae ignored him. Matsuda had spent so long wondering how Kumagawa could live wanted by no one. After meeting Emukae the answer was obvious, neither of them cared about what other people thought. “Hey, hey, do you know what the difference between infatuation and love is?”    
  
“Hey, hey, do you know what the difference between a crazy bitch and an ugly bitch is. Oh wait, you’re both.”    
  
“Oh, when you sweet talk me like that I fall in love with you even more.” 

 

“I should ask Kamu-cutie to do me a favorite and surgically remove the foot that’s been permanently lodged in my mouth.” 

 

“Hee hee hee. Everything you say is so funny. You have such a silver tongue.”   
  
“No, I have a tongue of lead. Let me die of lead poisoning already.”    
  
In the background while Emukae was obviously flirting with Matsuda, and Mikan stabbed a doll. Wait, that doll was dressed in a small white labcoat. Was that doll supposed to look like him? Should he be worried about that? 

 

“Sorry, Emukae I’m not interested. I can’t even hate you that much, because you see there’s somebody I already hate with all of my heart.”    
  
“Is it yourself?”   
  
“That sexy bastard should just go die already.” 

  
  


“Mmm, the thing about infatuation. It’s one-sided. It’s about what you want. I don’t think you cared that much if Enoshima-san loved you back, you just wanted to be able to keep on loving her.”    
  
He just wanted to live for her.    
Those were the words he had said before he said goodbye. 

  
“The same with Komaeda-san and Hinata-san. They’ll never tell you how they really feel. Even if they were naked in bed next to you, I bet you wouldn’t do anything.”    
  
Because loving sustains you.   
You’ve confused loving and living as if they’re the same thing.   
You think that’s the reason your heart beats anymore.    
Love for you is larger than the usual romantic love.   
It’s like a religion.    
No, it’s more like who you are.    
  
“But, someone like Kumagawa-san who is genuine and straightforward with his feelings you can’t handle. You despise him because you have to despise him.”   
  
“So what? He’s smelly, and his breath is bad. If he wants to be liked maybe he should shower with me.” Matsuda cleared his throat. “Maybe he should go take a shower.”    
  
“I just think that’s a shitty way to treat your best friend.”   
  
“Says the girl who wants to stab people she loves.”    
  
“I’m a psycho but at least I’m not a tool.” 

  
Mikan had stopped stabbing the doll over and over, and now she was surgically operating on it and pulling all of its stuffing out of its stomach. Matsuda decided to look away. Out of sight, out of mind. He looked at Kumagawa on the screen, alive during the class trial. “I bet he still misses you.” 

  
“Yep yep! If I told Kumagawa-san I was super super sorry, and batted my eyes I’m sure we’d make up and be all lovey dovey like before I just…” She gripped her own face. It was like somebody else’s hand, the hand of an abuser trying to take hold of her, to possess her. “I want him to stop forgiving people. Even if I’m the one he can’t forgive.”    
  
It was not hard to figure out how she felt. Even for Matsuda who was so oblivious to other people’s feelings sometimes he wanted to take a scalpel to his own brain to figure out where exactly it all went wrong. It hurt seeing someone walk all over the person you loved. So said Matsuda, the human doormat.   
  
“Why do you love me so much anyway?” He asked Emukae for what had to be the hundredth time.    
  
“Because you’re in pain. You’re always in pain.”    
  
“Fuck off. Maybe I’m not some brooding troubled boy masking his pain. Maybe I just suck as a person. Have you ever thought of that?”    
  


🧸

 

The black dahlia. 

  
It was a flower famous for its association with a murder. Its dark color was a universal symbol of negative emotions. A flower no one could love, like that boy who painted himself in all black. Not all the flowers were beautiful, the black dahlia, the rotten rafflesia flowers, they still lived ugly and misshapen as they were.    
  
A flower that meant betrayal.    
  
Matsuda could stand being hated. If someone told him they hated him to his face, he would just tell them to get the fuck in line. He was fine with being used and discarded because he was used to that, it was what he expected.    
  
He didn’t want to be hurt in a way he couldn’t expect.    
The fact that there was pain he wasn’t numb too scared him.   
He was afraid of a little bit of pain, that was all.    
It wasn’t the brutality that Junko murdered him with. It was that it hurt. He could feel the pinprick of the knife entering his chest. Why didn’t she just tell him she had wanted him to die. If she had just told him he would have died. Why did he have to lie to him?   
  
His Black Dahlia.   
That flower express betrayal.    
A flower no one could love.    
A flower soaked in a deep burgundy red of someone else’s blood. 

 

“Are you narrating to yourself in your head?” Ikkun suddenly asked him.   
  
“No.”   
  
“Really, because it seems like you are.”   
  
“Shouldn’t you be busy expressing in the most flowery poetic terms possible, how hard it is that nobody likes you, because you’re ugly, stupid and have a terrible eprsonality.”   
  
“Nah, I’m done with poetics. I thought I’d stop trying to express myself and spend the rest of my life as an unthinking idiot.”   
  
“Really? You’re just starting that now. I didn’t notice.” 

  
“Nonsense upon nonsense really…” Ikkun tried to disengage. The drawback of having no personality, and being generally spineless is that people tended to just say whatever they wanted around you. It was a little bit of a drag. He wanted to stand up for himself, but that required a self to begin with. “So you’re some kind of doctor? You must get along with your patients well.”    
  
“Yeah, they all love me.”   
  
“No, we hate you.” Kamukura picked up the book he had been reading and tossed it at Matsuda’s head. He had gotten bored and decided to steal every novel in the mystery section of an abandoned bookstore and read through them. That had killed a few hours. The challenge for this week was a murder mystery after all.    
  
“Oh? You suddenly have feelings now? Since fucking when?”    
  
“On second thought I don’t want emotions after all. I mean look how ugly they look on you.”    
  
“Hey, with all the talents you have could you actually come up with a decent comeback?”   
  
“If I’m a faulty product I think the surgeon is to blame.”   
  
“No way, you were just so useless that even my black jack levels of surgical skills couldn’t fix you.”    
  
Ikkun looked between Kamukura and Matsuda as they both fought. He looked like a shy child caught between his parent’s divorce. Even for Kamukura it was hard to get a firm grasp on Ikkun. He always seemed to be slipping away the more you reached out for him. In Kamukura’s eyes that analyzed and predicted everything he saw Ikkun kind of like a blur. Ikkun was quiet. It was like every single movement of his, down to his breathing, was restrained like he was trying to make as little noise as possible. 

 

He never wanted to cause any waves.    
  
That was why it was hard for him to watch people fight. He hated watching couple’s fight. They should just decide if they loved or hated each other already. What he couldn’t stand was the tension. The feeling that something would break. Because, he knew it would be him.   
  
For an insensitive guy who was completely oblivious to other people’s emotions, he was somehow reading the feelings of everyone in the room at once. The way Kamukura and Matsuda crashed into each other again, and again. It was like a storm on the ocean. It was only going to increase in velocity.    
  
It was never going to stop making waves. The ocean wouldn’t be still even for one moment. For Ikkun that was terrifying.    
  


Matsuda picked up his white lab coat and threw it around his shoulders. He grabbed Iikun by the hand, and started to drag him away. “That’s it, I’m taking him and going to investigate the murders.” 

 

_ Oh no, am I being taken in the divorce?  _ Ikkun thought for a moment, before.  _ Wait, what am I even thinking about? _ For someone who was satisfied living just treading water, he got swept up in the currents of others far too easily. All that meant was he was far too weak willed to live on his own as a person, even if he was anti-social and had no likable qualities as a person.    
  
He didn’t like being touched.   
He didn’t like not being touched.   
He hated being looked at.   
He hated being ignored.   
  
He was just indecisive.    
  
The two of them arrived at the place where Ikkun had been discovered alongside the body. “Hey you, are you going to do anything or just stand there looking ugly?” Matsuda asked him suddenly.    
  
“Not really.” Ikkun tried to be honest. “I pretend to be a detective sometimes, like how I pretend to be a person.”    
  
“Yeah, can you stop saying weird shit like that.” Matsuda said cutting him off. He could already tell Ikkun was going to be one of those types. “You seem like a bad actor anyway.” 

 

As they walked around the room, Ikkun avoided looking at the corpse. Matsuda recognized that look, it was not disgust, it was disinterest. He looked like he had seen this exact same kind of scene too many times before to feel anything about it. 

 

Those eyes of discolored amber. They weren’t dead. They were fossilized long ago. Ikkun’s eyes never focused on anything like the world was passing him by in a blur. “Why are those two girls always following you around?”   
  
“I don’t know. Maybe because they have shit-taste in people?”    
  
“You don’t like yourself very much do you?”    
  
“If you were me, would you like yourself?”   
  
“Probably not.”   
  
“See!” Matsuda felt so validated he wanted to jump for joy. Life was a happy song and he just wanted to start singing. “Fucking finally, someone gets it!”   
  


Ikkun thought the corpse looked sloppy. If murder was a work of art then this would be a shallow piece trying to copy the surface elements of the original and failing to attain the amount of death. Ikkun did not say any of that aloud though, because he had some fleeting self awareness and knew how insane speaking his thoughts would make him sound.    
  
It would be better for everyone if he just stopped thinking. He really, really wanted to go braindead.    
  
“Hey, that guy… boring, no personality.”   
  
“You mean Kamu-kissypoo?” 

 

“Yeah. Him.” It was impossible for Matsuda to shake the feeling that he was talking to someone familiar whenever Iikun spoke up. “Do you really even like him? Or rather, do you like being around him? Do you feel good being near him?” 

 

“Why would I want to be friends with someone who doesn’t make me hate myself and every decision I’ve ever made that led up to me being friends with them?” 

  
  


“Umm…” Ikkun was not sure what to say. In general, when he spoke it tended to upset others. Sometimes he did it on purpose because it felt better to inflict it on purpose then do it without even realizing it, but when Yasuke started to on a tirade he especially did not know what to say.    
  
Why does everybody else have so much personality?    
  
It made him feel like he wasn’t trying hard enough. As someone who was just a washout, he was simply inferior. Oh well. What was he thinking about a moment ago. It was probably just nonsense anyway.    
  
“If you don’t like being around him, you should just run away. That’s what I would do.”    
  
“You’re very proud of yourself, huh?”    
  
“There’s only one skill I’ve actively honed over my life, and I’m slightly above average at running.” He was proud of his cowardice if nothing else. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. If only he could avoid the light that hit him, then he could be completely invisible. “It seems like you’re here even though you don’t want to be, like he’s controlling you.”   
  
“What?” 

  
“I mean isn’t it painful just being around him? People usually run away from things that are painful.”    
  
Ikkun continued to ramble.    
  
“The fact that he won’t let you go. It’s like it’s some kind of punishment.”   
  
Ikkun was too unfamiliar to remind him of anybody. A perfect stranger. He was too familiar to not remind him of someone. A long lost love he could never let go of. He was someone who was impossible to pin down. He just shifted too much. He was always shifting away when you tried to look at him, the light shifted around him. If Matsuda looked away he was pretty sure he would forget every single detail of the boy’s face.   
  
Except for his eyes. 

His eyes reminded him of someone he could never forget. If he forgot her, he would forget himself. Those were Enoshima’s eyes. Disinterested in everything. Having given up on the whole world.    
  
Kanmukura Izuru.   
His sin. His betrayal. His black Dahlia.   
Even if the flower was poisonous, Matsuda would still eat it.   
He wanted flowers to grow inside of his stomach.    
  


“He won’t let go of you. You’re his.”    
  
“What are you even saying?”   
  
“Just running my mouth.” More of his nosense. Ikkun sounded like he was sleeptalking more than half the time. It was hard to tell if he was conscioously forming words or if they just fell out of him on accident sometimes because his head was so covered in cracks. “If there is a murderer among us what will you do?”    
  
“Beg him to fucking kill me already. How does he have the nerve? Going around slaughtering random people, when I’m right here.”   
  
“You won’t die.”   
  
Matsuda suddenly turned around. He had the feeling most main characters in a horror movie did when the monster was lingering behind them slightly off camera. “Huh?” 

  
“Even if you want to you won’t die. Dying isn’t that easy. If it was I would have figured it out by now.”   
  
“You’re a fucking weirdo you know that.”    
  
Ikkun’s face did not change.    
His eyes.   
His eyes.   
His eyes.    
Did not change.    
  
“You’re making me sound too interesting. Your friend was right, I’m as boring as they come.” 

  
  
  



	44. Ram in Wolf's Clothing

The boy who had taken her hostage led them in circles around the city for a little while, before he realized he had no idea where he was going.    
  
Apparently, this boy was not the type to think ahead.    
  
“Don’t worry, Atua will guide us.”    
  
Angie said, as she offered to throw him around.    
  
The boy with white hair just like hers let his jaw fall open. “...Eh? Where’s this atua guy you keep talking about anyway?” Hitoshiki looked around. “Is he hiding from me or somethin? Come out you bastard.” 

Apparently, this boy was not the type to think. 

The two of them were now holed up in an old church. To be honest, Angie hated the sight of them. The cracked concrete, the dilapidated wood, whenever she was around a church she could feel hands grabbing at her feet, and the sound of their crying. Her mother had told her she was born to make people happy, but the adults never once smiled at her. She never saw any smiles, only faces that were choking back tears, and begging to be saved.    
  
Atua loved his creations, but humans were made so imperfect from the very beginning. The happiness that they sought just did not exist for them. The more they reached for it, the more she felt those hands crawl up her bare feet, up her legs, and further, further… The life that Angie saw through the eyes of the pathetic adults who were always coming to her to complain was full of suffering. There was nothing to be gained by continuing to live. All that happens is that they became even more pathetic than before.    
  
She did not like churches, but she did not know where else to go. There was nowhere else she belonged. Not in this city, not anywhere. So she went to an abandoned church to look for shelter.    
  
She was sure there were plenty of children who did not like returning to the house their parent’s owned, but because they had nowhere else to go they were forced to call it home.    


Hitoshiki Zerozaki, feared serial killer was posing with his arms held out on his sides just hanging there. Angie barked out commands as she sat there looking back between him, and the sketchbook she was keeping on her knee. “No, no good. This isn’t working at all. I need a living breathing model, but it’s like there’s no one standing in front of me at all.”    
  
“Hey, why the hell are you bossing me around anyway? Don’t forget you’re the hostage here-”    


  
“Raise your hands higher! Try to stand out just a little bit, I can’t draw someone with such a boring appearance, why did auta send me such a normal guy to draw?”    
  
“How the hell is a serial killer normal? Hey, hey, don’t you see my hair. It’s white! That’s pretty different.”    
  
“But… my hair is different. And there’s already like, two serial killers here, ya?”   
  
“Shut up I’m special! I’m a special boy! I’ll show you a masterpiece!” Zerozaki had forgotten all about trying to regain control back again in this hostage situation and instead held his hands up all the way to the sky, like he was about to do the ‘ymca’ dance and shouted with all of his heart. “There’s something boiling up inside of me.”   
  
“Ehhh? But there’s nothing inside of you.”    
  
“At least shut up about my fashion sense okay? This is unique.” Zerozaki tugged at his ear. When they were stealing art supplies for Angie they had also stopped to get an ear piercing kit for him.He pulled his earlobe to show the paperclip he was using to keep the fresh hole open. “Kahahaahaahaha! I don’t need to bother killing you because I’ve killed you already. My style is killer, fashion is deadly! I’m one of a kind.”    
  
He seemed to be enjoying himself, or maybe it was just his individuality that he was enjoying.    
  
“Yes, maybe if every other thirteen year old on the planet died.”   
  
“I’m nineteen.” 

“Really?” She clapped her hands over her mouth in genuine surprise. “You could have fooled me.”    
  
“You don’t gotta blab every thought that comes to your head the moment you have it. Sometimes it’s nice just to keep your mouth shut.” There went the serial killer whining about being nice.    
  
“I’m just saying how I feel. I can’t be dishonest. Atua hates liars.” Angie hated liars as well.  _ Pale gray hair on her head is proof of innocence. This child as special.  _

Angie hated lies, but she also found it impossible to say her true feelings. Teasing this boy was fun, and Angie wanted to laugh but she was scared. If she laughed, would it really be her laughing? Everyone around her was always crying, they all dumped their burdens onto her that was why she had to live as carefree as possible.    
  
Angie started to wonder if maybe her parents had not been liars. Maybe she really was possessed by Atua. This laughter was not hers. Somebody else was speaking those words.    
  
Her hands traveled over the blank canvas in front of her. She had gotten tired of painting with a brush, and on a whim dipped her fingers in. She had wanted to feel the colors on her skin. She wanted to feel blue.    
  
Art is quite fun.   
It’s a language without words.    
She had to lie and repeat teachings all day. Teachings that were probably all made up. The adults stuffed words in her mouth until her own voice died out. She had no words left to express what she was feeling, she had no voice, so she had to scream in colors instead. She had to cry in blue, and get angry in red.    
  
Zerozaki stopped posing and looked over her shoulder. “Kahahaahaha! A cute girl like you drawing a gory picture like this! What a riot!”    
  
“Hmm, you don’t like gore, hmmm?”   
  
“Nah, I hate it. What makes you think I’d like blood and guts flying everywhere? Do I look like a freak to you, that shit ain’t normal.”   
  
“You look like a serial killer to me.” 

She pointed at the painting in front of her. It was black paint that had been painted over and over again and again, as if she was trying to scribble out the image itself. The shape resembled a human, but it was some pale lesser thing that was lacking in something.A picture that rends the heart just by looking at it, Angie was sure, the faceless as it was, the boy in the painting was crying. “You look like this to me.”    
  
“”Like a ghost? Yeah, I get it literary reference woohoo. We’re fucking geniuses.”    
  
“Oh, you can read?”    
  
“Just because I’m a middle school dropout doesn’t mean I can’t read. I’ve always preferred Dazai’s works.” Hitoshiki Zerozaki, in that moment had been added to the long list of people who were smarter than Kumagawa. “Seriously though, why won’t people leave me alone? You think they’d know better not to hang out with a serial killer. Instead I get dragged around by some possessed haunted chick.”    
  
Apparently Zerozaki had forgotten he was the one who had held her at knife point, and now was acting like the victim.    
  
Angie suddenly, broke out into laughter. “Nyahaahahahaha! Ghosts, do you really believe a thing like that exists? Well, I guess you are a murderer. If there was a life after death, or you could hang around as a ghost, murder wouldn’t look so bad anymore.” 

“Well, well now that’s surprising. You struck me as the kind of oblivious chick who will believe anything.”    
  
Angie tilted her head back and forth. “Oh? Oho? Ohoho? What gave you that idea?” 

“I mean, you’re around a serial killer and it’s like you don’t care at all.”    
  
Angie was still smiling. “Ehhh? I’m obviously scared for my life! Murderers are the most despicable people imaginable, I really haaaaaate being around you.” She did not seem to notice at all that her face was completely inappropriate for words

“So you’re scared?”   
  
“Nah, not at all. Atua is always watching over me! Nyahaahah! That’s atua for ya! He’s so divine!”    
  
“Sounds like a stalker. Really, I gotta get a word in with this atua creep.” Hitoshiki grumbled, even though he was the one who had taken a girl hostage. His eyes went back to the portrait, it was hard for him to believe a girl with an empty head, and such a shallow smile, had painted something with such depth.    
  
“No need to worry. Atua is watching even no good murdering scum like you. He’s so kind, he’ll even waste his kindness on someone completely worthless. Yaaay!”   
  
“Hey, hey, don’t cheer at that kind of thing.” 

Angie got in his face. She lectured him, like she was some kind of god. “No worries, no worries, just Atua. If you were to confess how pathetic you are in front of him, I’m sure he would forgive you. Come on, come on, come on, tell me. Why do you kill people?” 

Now she was just badgering him. Hitoshiki stepped back, but Angie just followed him. He really had picked the wrong person to take hostage. “Fine, whatever. This story is a little generic. You were a little brat once, right? Well, so as I. What kind of brat was I? Well, I wasn’t particularly weird or anything. I even believed in God. If my big bro hit me, it hurt. I wanted to make my big bro smile. That’s the kind of little brat I was… but sometimes, I would read a book or watch a tv or something, and during those times I would always start pondering how one kills a human being. The first time I realized what I was doing, I was seriously freaked out you know? I thought about killing people like it was the most normal thing in the world. The idea that this was really me, was the scariest thing.” 

“Sounds like you were a terrible child. No wonder your brother hit you. You probably deserved it.” 

“Do you give a crap about other people’s feelings at all?” 

Angie looked genuinely confused for a moment. Slowly, the smile faded off of her face. What was behind a person’s smile? There were several muscles, of course. There was the teeth, naturally. There were several layers of skin, and if you peel that back you would find a skull.    
  
But what else was there? What was she failing to see?    
Her eyes were just like a child’s.    
They were filled with innocent confusion, and looked wet with feeling. 

“What do other people feel? Isn’t that kind of like… watching someone else’s dream? If you’re not the dreamer than you won’t understand it, ya.”    
  
“Damn, you really are a ditz aren’t you? Tee hee hee , I’m so clumsy, I have no understanding of other human beings at all. Whoopsie.” Zerozaki grinded his teeth. When he got like that, he looked like an agitated animal waiting to feed. That boy was sharpening his horns, trying desperately to look like a wolf. “So, there’s really no one? I mean, even I have family, even if he’s a pain in my ass.”    
  
“Hmm, there was someone. He said he liked my art.”    


There was a boy. She stopped caring about what other people’s faces looked like. She could not see beyond their expressions, and frankly she was tired of looking. She was always being shown their ugliest face, their most desperate, their unpleasant emotions. All of those feelings were dumped on a girl who was no more than a child.    
  
Then she met that boy. The lower half of his face was covered with a mask. He showed no part of himself to her. She started to get curious. What kind of face was he hiding?   
  
🧸

 

Yeah, she still remembered that day as clear as a bell. She was greeting the adults that were coming to complain to her, no, worship her as usual. It was a daily thing so she did not mind it at all. 

At least that was what she had thought. She took pity on her parents, so she could put up with her foolish parents, and their foolish believers. But, maybe she did not want to play that game from the start.    
  
A game that other people are forced to play is no fun at all. No fun for the players at least, but maybe it’s still fun for the host of the game. Maybe those parents were having fun with the game they forced her to play.   
  
That day just like all the others, no one came there with a joyful face. Everyone came with such desperate pleas written all over their faces as they used her to vent. The stories were all the same. She heard the same story again and again. No one loves me. When money runs out, love flies out the door.    
  
Angie wondered if the nerves in her face had become deadened. She wanted to yawn with boredom. She wanted to ask them if any of them had interesting problems. Hearing the same story over and over was boring. But, all she was capable of doing was smiling for them.    
  
Not a single person listened to her story. There were no words to speak her story with. All that was left was colors. But no matter how many times she tried to paint, the colors she saw did not match what she saw inside of her. It did not match her memory.    
  
It always ended up like this.   
No matter how much she tried to draw the feelings never ended up right.    
She would start with one canvas and have several on the ground.    
She had to paint.   
She had to forget.

Not a single person here in this church would listen to her stories.   
This was all she had.   
She was overwhelmed by feelings she did not understand, and the more she painted, the less she understood about herself. She didn’t even like painting that much. She hated the smell, and how dirty she got, and whenever she started she felt herself drifting away from her own body to the point where her fingers became difficult to move. But she just kept at it, because she did not know anything else.    
  


Then one day a strange boy came to her church. His face was covered in a mask, and his dark features were hidden by his long hair. She expected him to start complaining the same as everybody else, but he merely pulled his bandaged fingers through his hair. “I am aware of how I come across-”   
  
“Like a total weirdo, ya.”    
  
“Hm.” He said sharply, but then let it go. “But if I’m being honest my own life is uninteresting. I barely know what it means to live as a human. That’s why I like to watch others live.”   
  
“Eh? You trying to figure out the right way to live?”    
  
“There is no right way. There’s no proper way to live, but everyone still lives.”    
  
“Until they die.”   
  
“Yes, until they die,” He repeated smoothly.    
  
He said he just wanted to see what her life was like. He wanted to see what she saw. The sights beneath her eyes. If Angie could, she would pluck out her eyeballs and give them to him. Pale blue eyes, that saw the same sights every day.    
  
“It’s all silent, and blue…”    
  
He said when he saw her painting.    
  
“Blue?”    
  
“Yes, it is blue.”    
  
“Ya, it’s blue, right!” 

They were having a deep discussion. The boy wrapped his arms around himself as he spoke. “My older sister used to say, if it looks blue to you, then anything can be blue, whether it’s an apple or a rabbit.”    
  
That moment, for the first time in her life. She felt like she communicated with someone else for real. Her heart was pounding in excitement like an idiot. She tried to drop a stone on it. She knew her life was not going to change at all. The next day she would wake up the same as always, and listen to other people’s complaints all morning.    
  
But, he asked her question after question.   
She was up the whole night talking with him.   
For the first time there was someone listening to her complaints.    
  
“I don’t see why you’re so interested in this stuff. When you die, you just become nothing.”

His face remained neutral as always. “What do you think that’s like?”    
  
“Eh?” Nobody asked her what she believed. She just repeated what her parents told her to say. “After you die, there’s nothing, it’s just dark.”   
  
It was all silent and blue.    
A faintly blinding glow.   
A drowsy longing for a rest.    
A blue world. 

“Hey, are you afraid of dying?” She asked him.    
  
“No, why?”    
  
“All of those people. It’s like they’re looking forward to dying. All they do day in and day out is beg to be taken up to heaven so they don’t have to keep living their miserable lives. They want a perfect world that doesn’t exist, not this one. If there was no afterlife I think that would be much kinder, there’d be no more pain, nothing.”    
  
No matter how much she tried to retain her smile, she always felt like her head was going to split in two. Why did she always have to listen to those people nagging her? Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. She just wanted their voices to stop. She wanted their dirty hands to stop reaching out for her.    
  
“I do not think you believe that.”    
  
“A-wha?”    
  
“You said there’d be nothing after you died. You won’t have to suffer anymore. Even you see death as some means of escape, but if it’s like you said it won’t be better. You’ll just disappear. No sense of self. No more colors. If you’re aware of what it is, then it’s not nothing.”    
  
“Then, what is it?”   
  
“How am I supposed to know?” The boy shrugged his shoulders casually at her. “I haven’t died yet.”    
  
“So should I believe in an afterlife or not?”    
  
“I’m not telling you to believe in anything. I just think it’s important to figure out what you yourself believe, without having your thoughts colored by others. The pure, undistilled, blue.”    
  
“Well when we die we gotta search around and figure out if there’s anything there!” Angie had suddenly gotten excited. She grabbed him by his old fashioned uniform coat and shook him. 

“Sure, sure, but let’s hope that doesn’t come soon.”    
  
“What? You don’t want to hang out with the beautiful, smart, and likeable me?”    
  
“If you were to die the world would lose a little of its beauty.”    
  
So, there’s no need to rush he said.    
A lot of things happened after that, but in the end he was just a tourist in her life. When he left, Angie realized she was truly meant to keep painting alone for the rest of her life. She had forgotten the difference between herself and others, and only remembered it when he was already gone. 

  
As she bickered with Hitoshiki, her eyes glanced towards one of the television screens in the church. On that screen, the death of a boy who had already looked like a ghost when he was still alive was announced. 

Angie whispered to herself.    
“It’ll be soon.”    
And smiled.    
“Let’s explore the nothingness together, Kiyo.” 

 

🧸

 

“We should try to find the killer ourselves, rather than waiting for Hinata-kun, or Kurokami-san to decide these things for us.” 

Kei said calmly as he finished replacing weapons in the holsters he kept underneath his shirt, and buttoned his shirt back up.    
  
“So we can tell him he did a good job.” Takumi replied with a genuine smile on his face.    
  
“No.”   
  
“So we can have a friendly conversation about murder.”    
  
“No.”    
  
“So we can kill him.”    
  
“It’s like dealing with a child.” Munakata spend every moment of his life disciplining himself. Always afraid that he would break something, that he would break someone. Then there was Takumi who just seemed to do as he liked.    
  
Takumi scratched at his greasy, uncombed bedhead. “Why doesn’t anybody appreciate my murder aesthetics?” Now he was pouting like a kid too.    
  
Munakata thought silence sometimes could express more than words could. However, Takumi disagreed. “You’re too quiet you know. The person you love won’t understand your feelings if you don’t stab them.”   
  
“Stab them?”   
  
“It’s the quickest way to make somebody feel something.”   
  
“Yeah, that’s pain they would be feeling. Not love.”    
  
Takumi who had fallen in love with the girl who killed his entire class once, he tended to get both of them confused. He genuinely seemed to think it over for a moment, before he continued. Takumi remembered the day when his classmates die. People said that he was a poor child, that he was unfortanate, but Takumi did not think those were painful memories at all.   
  
Even when people died in front of them he had no idea what their pain felt like, or the fear that flashed in their eyes before their final moments. Ever since that day he had felt a constant numbness, like his body failed to recognize what had happened to him. Maybe he did die that day, but his nerves failed to register that he was dead. What he felt was a lack of pain. As if something was missing. As if something had been stolen from him.    
  
Mukuro clung to his body, and apologized over and over, but he had no idea why she was sad. He was there. He was sure he had physically experienced those memories. But when he played them back in his head, they were unreal. It was like they were edited and shown for a movie. 

“You always hide your feelings…”    
  
“Mn.”   
  
“I like to talk about my feelings.”   
  
“Really? I never would have guessed. I’m so happy you finally feel comfortable enough to tell me what you're thinking."    
  
“You don’t sound happy at all.”    
  
Takumi looked at the way, Munakata gave nervous glances at the television screens in the windows of shops they passed by whenever Zenkichi appeared on one of the screens. “You shouldn’t hide the way you feel from a friend.” 

“How would you know? You don’t have any friends.”    
  
“Oh no. Has he figured out that I’m socially awkward? I thought I was doing such a good job of hiding it.” Takumi reached forward and touched his reflection on the glass window, as if he were caressing the face of someone else. The face of someone identical, but so different. “If your friend can’t understand your feelings then they’ll be lonely. I was… a bad friend.” 

If Shuuji had a friend who had understood him. If there was somebody who sympathized with him. If he did not have to bear all that pain alone, would he have become a killer?    
  
When Takumi returned home from the hospital, everything was still white. It was like his eyes refused to process images. They just passed in front of his eyes, people, colors, everything, everything passed him over.    
  
He had gotten too used to the white hosiptal walls, too used to being kept in isolation. When he was suddenly brought home surrounded by people he could not see anything. He could not even reognize  the faces of his own parents. It was like a different child had come out of that locker, than the one who was locked in.    
  
The first color he saw was red.    
Then he saw the crumpled bodies of his parents on the ground. Why had he done that? His mother was always kind to him. She had never once scolded him too harshly. His father never yelled at him for not being like other kids. When other parents whispered about him being ‘off’ both his mother and father defended him.   
He killed them without reason.   
He killed them without passion.   
He could see no beauty in this act.   
It was just murder.

And if it was not beautiful, then his feelings of guilt started to climb up the back of his esophagus and tried to force their way out of his mouth. When he heard the door open behind him, Takumi forgot that Shuuji was coming to visit that day.   
  
Takumi never cared about what other people thought of him. Even in the days when he had no friends at all, being alone had never once bothered him. Shuuji hated killers right? For the first time the idea of being hated by someone else was completely intolerable to Takumi.    
  
Shuuji threw his arms around him.

“It was a mistake. You didn’t mean to kill them. You don’t want to be a killer, Hijirahara-kun.” 

  
He was not hated. But, that too was painful. He knew in that moment he had hurt Shuuji. Shuuji wanted more than anything to return to a normal life. Shuuji genuinely cared for his happiness, and Takumi had destroyed that happiness, that normal life that Shuuji loved the most with his own two hands.    
  
For the first time, Shuuji thought he understood the feelings of another person. He could feel Shuuji’s pain like it was his own. As if their nerves were tied together in a bundle, as if their bodies were connected, they melted into one another. For the first time in his life he was conscious of a possible, if feeble movement of love inside of his heart.    
  
And that scared him. Takumi was afraid to melt into someone else. He pushed the other boy away from him ending their embrace. 

“You should stop talking about me like you know me.”   
  
A terrible half-smile spread across his lips.    
  
“I wanted to be this way. So just leave me alone. You’re annoying. And your breath smells bad, and your smile is creepy. And my middle school days were much more fun before you started bothering me every day.”    


I?    
Me?   
Who was that again?   
Who was he talking about?    
  
Shuuji may have broken things, but Takumi deliberately made the first crack. Part of him wanted things to fall apart.    
  
“No, you’re wrong. I was a bad friend.” Munakata said as he stared at his own sheathed katana. On the television screen Zenkichi repeated again, Medaka, Medaka, Medaka like it was his only line of dialogue. “I got jealous, and I tried to hurt her even though Hitoyoshi-kun cares about her.”   
  
“There’s no way you would have killed her.”    
  
“Huh?”    
  
“You know it would hurt Hitoyoshi-kun. Medaka-chan isn’t important to you, but she’s important to the person that’s important to you. You’d never do something that would deliberately hurt a friend.” Takumi closed his hands over his mouth, like he was hiding something and then muttered the next part to himself.    
  
_ “I wish I could be more like you…”  _ _   
_   
“Well, to start out with you can actually make eye contact when people make conversation with you.”   
  
“No, I don’t wanna!” 

 

🧸

 

_ I’m so angry.  _ _   
_ _ Oh, I’m so angry.  _   
  
She had to burn.    
She had to forget.    
This anger was all Medaka had.    
  
She already knew, the moment she stopped being angry there would be nothing left inside of her. Then, and only then it would set in how lonely she really was. It’s not that she was particularly prone with anger. She had not been born angry.    
  
She had just let it pile up, and she finally realized the reason why. She had let it pile up. From the moment she was born until now, she had never shared her true feelings with anybody. She called Kumagawa a liar, but what was she doing, smiling, and acting like she loved people, like she was friends with everybody.    
  
She had lied to her best friends. Zenkichi was by her side her entire life, and yet Medaka felt she had never once shared her real feelings with him. How lonely must she have made him feel? He did not know for sure whether the girl who was the most important person to him loved him back or not.    
  
_ Why didn’t you get tired of me?  _   
  
It was the one question she could not answer. When she had calmed down, Sonia asked her a question. “You claim you love everyone, but do you have that many friends Medaka-chan?”    
  
She tried to name Akune, Mogami, Togami, Makoto, Fukawa, but she could not remember the last time she had talked to any of them.    
  
“I don’t mean people you like, you’re a very kind girl Medaka-chan. You grow fond of people so easily, super fucking fantastic!” Sonia did not seem to notice how off-color her sudden outbursts were. “What I mean is friends you would go to karaoke with.”   
  
Medaka had never been invited to Karoake not even once.    
  
“That was how it was when I moved here from my country. I thought I would finally make some nakama just like the manga I was always reading, but I was just being condescending. Everyone smiled to my face, but no one really liked me.” 

Medaka did not say much more. She was afraid if she opened her mouth again she might spit fire. 

It was becoming clear to her.    
As if delusions and day dreams she had spent her entire life staring at were fading away like a mist that disappeared from her eyes. She was destined to spend her whole life alone.    
  
“Beast woman! You love people, yes?”    
  
“That’s my line. Can’t change it now it’s too iconic for my character to let go of.” Medaka had no idea what to say, so she made a bad joke.    
  
“Well, I hate people.”    
  
“I keep hearing that. You all have such bad social skills. Just a bunch of awkward self-important brats.” Medaka retorted. But then, suddenly an idea came to her. She started to giggle out of nowhere. She definitely looked like a weirdo. “Hey, hey, hey, hey…” She started to poke at his jacket, even though Gundham had a strict no-touching rule. “If you hate people so much then why do you like Sonia?”    
  
Gundham pulled his scarf up over his face. Sonia was wearing his purple one, and the replacement he had been given was red.    
  
“I have bitten off my own tongue to prevent me from speaking those powerful words that would drive you mad if you heard them.”   
  
“You mean words of love?”   
  
Medaka loved people.   
Or, maybe she just loved love.   
She loved the act of being in love, so she directed her love at everybody.    
  
“Quiet. Fool.”    
  
“Ou know when you start denying it and get all blushy like that, it’s really obvious that you actually like her.”   
  
“Aren’t you supposed to be dumb when it comes to reading people?”   
  
“Well, sometimes I’m smart on accident.” Medaka sure sounded like a genius. 

  
Gundham thought of the poison he drank daily to numb himself. He thought of those cold days. . Hope’s Peak campus was covered in white. Gundham wearing all black stuck out like a stain on a perfectly white canvas.    
  
The world had always been a cold place to him. As far as he was concerned it was made of ice.    
  
If other people were cold to him that no longe raffected him. He had already been ignored by the most important woman in his life.    
  
He had drank too much poison, and was slowly passing out. When Gundham fell into the snow and thought, that his body might not be discovered until springtime, that he could leave this world without a single person noticing he was gone, a smile spread on his blue lips. He had one small regret and it was he had forgot to tell someone to feed his animals if he did not come home tonight.    
  
When he woke up there was a blonde girl waiting by his bedside. In the first few months of class he had overlooked her. He simply thought she was above someone who crawled around in the dirt like him, so he paid no attention to her.    
  
Maybe her kind words were not just talk.   
Maybe she had really meant what she said the first day of class about being everyone’s friend.    
Even though he had skipped every day after that, and ignored all her attempts to talk to him, she had still noticed him fall in the snow and dragged him all the way here.    
  
That kindness just irritated his skin.    
  
“You shouldn’t invite a boy all alone in your room, something bad might happen to you.”    
  
“Oh, like what?”    
  
There was something unmistakable in Sonia’s expression. She looked like someone who had never been defiled. She did not know how to distrust others. But that was simply because nobody had taught her too.    
  
This girl who was showered in affection and adorned with a golden crown. He who was left to starve and crawl around in the dirt. She who was so clean, he who could only dirty himself. They were both alone somehow, 

  
“”You’re always pretending to be such a terrible person, Tanaka-kun.”   
  
“No, it’s the truth. I’m not pretending.”    
  
“You’re a good actor.”   
  
“I’m not acting. I’m going to bite you.”   
  
“Go ahead.”    
  
“I’ve hated you since the first day I saw you. I’m actually glad, a stuck up girl like yourself has no friends.”   
  
“Lies, lies, all of it lies.”    
  
“Do not pretend to see through me. You do not possess a soul gem of the highest purity.”    
  
“Tanaka-kun, you’re way too kind to ever think those things. So it must be all lies.”    
  
Gundham hated everyone.   
Not a single person lifted a finger to help his mother.    
He hated them because-    
  
In the present moment Gundham looked back at Medaka. “You know my mother…”    
  
“Kuji-nee told me a little bit about her.”    
  
“She didn’t actually hate me. She loved me quite a bit.” That was why she cooked him those meals every day. She stayed at home to take care of him. She was quiet, and indifferent to him, and could only show those feelings in other ways  And she could not love him in the way he wanted to be loved. “You think loving people is a good thing, but someone’s love can hurt you just as much as their hate.”    
  
There was one girl he could not hate. She had the perfectly innocent look of someone who had never been defiled.    
  
But his hands had only dirtied her. Gundham stared at bandaged hands that would never heal. At wounds he did not want to heal. 

“Beast woman, don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?”   
  
“It’s very humiliating to have you of all people tell me that.” 

“You’re not as scary as you think you are.” 

Gundham himself was a real wolf. He tore their throats out with his fangs. That was why he knew the appearance, of a sheep trying to hide herself, trying desperately not to seem like prey. He pulled his scarf back over his mouth, to conceal his fangs.    
  
“You’re just a loud and annoying girl.”    
  
Medaka tilted her head.    
_ Was that supposed to make me feel better? _ _   
_ _ He just insulted me. _ _   
_ _ Should I just smile and pretend a heartwarming scene just took place?  _   
  
She still didn’t understand people at all.   
No, maybe it was just one person. She didn’t understand Zenkichi.

And it was scary not knowing the person you loved.   
That made her heart tremble just a little bit. A painful murmur.  
Ah, so that was why people so easily confused pain for love. 


	45. Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

He hates the way that Matsuda looks at him.    
  
Even in regular check ups, Matsuda’s eyes are drawing the dotted lines in black marker on his body where he’s going to cut. Matsuda has seen him naked before several times. His clothes don’t hide anything. He can’t hide anything. Matsuda sees past his skin and inside of him.    
  
Hinata remembered the feeling of being completely helpless on the operating table. The idea of being so weak, paralyzed under someone else’s hands. The slightest touch excited his whole body, and then numbed it. A few times imagined what it would be like if they switched places. What would he do if Matsuda was underneath him. If his touch could send waves of pleasure or pain, like electricity directly connected to his spinal column, sending a jolt of that feeling through strong enough to fry all of his nerves.    
  
It felt like Matsuda had pulled out both his brain and spinal column and rewired them. His body felt less and less like his own. His brain was giving out signals, but his body was less and less likely to receive them. There was someone else inside of him, like a fungus growing in the wet spaces between the synapses of his brain. He was fighting for control of his own body with someone else.    
  
He had a dream. In that dream he was brown, wet clay. Matsuda’s hands came forward and shaped him. He was nothing but dirt, and there was dirt everywhere, nothing special. He didn’t become anyone until he felt Matsuda’s hands on his body. Every touch of those spiderleg fingers gave him life. He wanted to be molded by Matsuda. He wanted to have the shape and form of somebody who Matsuda would love. In his hands he was naked, he was a greek statue, he was art, he was eternal.    
  
But, he was also afraid. He was afraid that Matsuda did not need him. When Matsuda made him into somebody else, he would forget about him. He wanted Matsuda to remember him at least, for the person he once was. He was scared. He was scared. He was scared. Did Matsuda hate him so much that he had to change him?    
  
He realized far too late. After he no longer recognized himself. He realized it when all he saw in the mirror was a pile of bandages. All he wanted was at least one person to accept him for the person he was, not what they could use him for. That feeling was just a dream, and he forgot about his dreams as soon as he woke up. His dreams had all been surgically removed from his head, by Matsuda’s knife.    
  
Kamukura woke up in the middle of surgery and laughed. His body was cut open, and he could see the reflection of his lungs expanding and contracting in the mirror, and he laughed. He laughed because he was afraid the next time he woke up, he would forget how to laugh. Every single doctor in the operating room had to grab his limbs and hold him down. He laughed until he choked on his own laughter and died. 

But he didn’t die. 

He was asleep but he would wake up soon. He was asleep, but he couldn’t sleep. No matter how many drugs they put in his system, he never slept these days. His body had built up too much of a resistance to them. It was boring waiting for himself to wake up. He wanted to dream. He would ream of Matsuda-kun. He dreamed about Matsuda-kun. He dreamed about Matsuda-kun. He dreamed about Matsuda-kun. He wanted to see Matsuda-kun when he woke up.    
  
Matsuda was the one constant in his world. Even if he forgot about himself, or how much the last surgery had hurt him, he would always see Matsuda-kun. Matsuda-kun would never leave his side. It was like Kamukura was a prisoner in this hospital room tied with a chain to the bed, but Matsuda’s guilt kept him a prisoner too. Kamukura was fine being a prisoner if it meant Matsuda was here, he could live the rest of his life trapped in one room if Matsuda was trapped as well.   
  
His world became a room with four white walls, and a boy with a white lab coat. 

When he woke up from surgery this time Matsuda was not there. Hinata hugged his knees, and hid underneath his blankets while sitting up on the bed like he was a child. There was nothing else for him to do but wait for Matsuda to return. A world where all he did was wait between one surgery and the next was so boring.    
  
Suddenly, someone pulled the blanket away from him. Somebody wrapped their arms around him, he felt their chest pressing against his back. “Hinata-kun, what’s wrong? Are you scared? Are you cold? Who left you all alone here, tell me!”  Hinata realized a moment later,  _ oh, it was just Mikan.  _ If Mikan sensed any distance between herself and another person, she would immediately start clinging.    
  
“Where’s Matsuda-kun…?”    
  
Hinata saw something flicker in Mikan’s eyes. Jealousy?    
Did she want Matsuda to cut her apart instead?   
Or did she want to be the one doing the cutting?    
  
“Awe, too bad sweetie. He’s out.”   
  
“Mm.”    
  
“That’s okay, we can't wait for him to return together.” Mikan noticed his ghoulish eyes, his ash-gray skin, he had the complexion of someone who had not slept in days. Even the sleep of death would not come for him. 

She sat next to him on the bed, and pulled his hair to get him to rest his head on her chest. “You can’t sleep? I know, you’re just like me. You can’t sleep unless someone’s next to you.”    
  
If he went to sleep he could dream of Matsuda. Maybe Matsuda would be back by the time he woke up.    
  
Matsuda would reach forward and then cut his forehead open with a knife. That was right every time he saw Matsuda, there was blood. His head was bleeding. Brain matter, and blood mixed together, drained out of him. Matsuda placed an instrument up his nose, and used it to scramble his brains, and then pull his brain out of his naval cavity in chunks.    
  
Every time he saw Matsuda he bled.    
Matsuda cut him.    
It was really, really boring doing the same thing over and over again.    
He was bleeding so much from his head, that the floor and Matsuda’s shoes were covered in blood. Each time Matsuda saw Hinata he cut away a piece of him and took it for himself.  _ Just tell me what you want from me. I’d give it to you.  _

It starts with blood, always blood, always the same story. Boring.    
  
“Help…”    
  
Mikan’s eyes seemed to come alive at that word.   
  
“What is it? You can tell me what’s wrong. Everybody else here is so scary, aren't they? I hate them all too. They’re always mean and pushing me around, and they’re so mean to my Hinata-kun. You can trust me. You’re the only one I like. I’m on your side.” Mikan began to ramble, sweet words like she was cooing them at a child.   
  
Hinata struggled to make his eyes focus. He did not recognize the face MIkan was making, he no longer could see the colors that made up other people's emotions. “Matsuda-kun, help me…”   
  
“You want to see Matsuda-kun?”    
  
Hinata shook his head.    
  
“I.. hate… him.”    
  
Kamukura brought his fingers to his forehead and felt the freshly sewn stitches there. He tried to feel the shape of his face, but it was completely different. He was a stranger to himself. He was in the body of a person he did not recognize. 

  
“Help me…”   
  
His body was a cage, and all Kamukura could do was scream from behind the bars. He grabbed onto Mikan and held her. His body was so much larger than hers. He could hear her heart beating through her chest, but he still could not hear his own.    
  
Mikan’s hysteria seemed to fade from her voice. Hinata considered that girl to be a thoroughly fake, and transparent person. All of her pleas of sympathy, all of her acts of kindness, they were all so obviously self serving. He did not think Mikan was capable of speaking in such a gentle voice.    
  
He had gotten used to his skin being pierced again and again by needles. Whenever someone came close to him, nausea sprung out from the depths of his stomach. He had forgotten what softness felt like. Had he ever been this close to a human being before?   
  
The person he used to be must have been so lonely.    
  
“I don’t know if I hate him or love him… I don’t know…who I am anymore…” Kamukura said, as he pulled at his long black hair. He only stopped because Mikan put her hand on top of his, and gently eased him away. “Who’s feelings are these?”   
  
“Listen to me. What you hear, what you feel right now is the real you. Feel your body.”    
  
“I...” Kamukura resisted her, tensing up against her. “I… I’m scared to feel the real me. What if Matsuda-kun doesn’t like me?”    
  
“Yeah.” Mikan was like an open wound, she was always bleeding everywhere. Yet, this was the first time she seemed so vulnerable. “When everybody is always leaving you, it’s hard to remember who you are.”    
  
“You’re going to leave too.”   
  
“I won’t.”    
  
“You will.”   
  
“I won’t.”   
  
“You will.”   
  
“Matsuda-kun is right you do have an attitude problem.” Mikan said, as she stroked his hair. Perhaps Mikan really was nothing more than a bleeding heart, but there was still something warm about being this close to her. A warmth Kamukura had forgotten a long time ago. “I… I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be the reason that you’re hurting. That’s why I’m staying here even though I hate it. Maybe Matsuda-kun feels that way too.”    
  
“Why…?”   
  
He really was a curious child.    
  
“Because I was hurt, by the person who was supposed to be taking care of me.”   
  
Kamukura realized then he had seen Mikan cry so many times, he thought she was completely open with her emotions. But, looking back, he had never once seen her smile.   
  
Why did she hide such a warm smile from him?    
  
Kamukura cried then into Mikan’s breasts. He thinks. Maybe he did. If he did cry though, he forgot about it, and forgot how to cry soon afterwards. 

 

🧸   
  
He wondered why Frankenstein rejected the monster.   
_ I just wanted to be. _ _   
_ _ What you desired me to be.  _   
  
Kamukura slowly woke up and realized he was dreaming. He did not so much dream, as relive his memories all mixed up together, like someone hit frappe in his brain. When he was undergoing surgery he had forgotten his past, and there was no future he had, so he existed in a present that seemed to extend forever. When he dreamed he returned to those times.    
  
It made him scared to sleep. Even if the surgeries had already ended, he could feel the ghost touch of Matsuda’s fingers, still grabbing hold of his brain.    
  
Speaking of Matsuda, where was he.    
  
“What part of don’t touch me, means don’t touch me! I know your brain is diseased, but I didn’t think your ears were broken as too!” 

Oh, there he was.    
  
“Matsuda-kun, stoooop.”    
  
“Hey, Tsumiki. Do you know why you were bullied all of your life?”   
  
“Why?”    
  
“It’s because you’re ugly and stupid” Matsuda said, “I think those are pretty good reasons to bully someone.”    
  
“Don’t agree with my bullies.”   
  
“Have you ever thought that maybe it was your fault that nobody likes you?”    
  
“I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.”    
  
He straightened up in his chair. Matsuda had unraveled the bandages around his eye.    
A pile of loose bandages.    
Scar tissue stitched together.    
Just like Kamukura had once been.    
_ Everything I want to become, is everything you desire.  _ _   
_ A smile teased its way on Kamukura’s lips.   
Even though he had forgotten how to smile.   
  
Mikan was frantically holding him back from digging out his own wound. Matsuda just loved to pick a scar. It was like he enjoyed being in pain. If he learned to let go he would be a little bit happier, whatever that meant. 

Ever since Kamukura had removed the ice pick from Matsuda’s eye, he had told him not to touch his eye, and not to take the bandage off. Matsuda acted like Kamukura had removed his heart and hid it underneath the floorboards, like there was something missing inside of him now, and he could hear his heart beating elsewhere outside of his chest.    
  
He acted like he was being driven mad. That something inside of him was breaking slowly.    
But, Kamukura already knew Matsuda was a broken boy to begin with.    
It was the reason he pushed people like Mikan and Kumagawa away. He could not stand people who were obviously broken, obviously useless, he did not want to see what he was desperately hiding about himself. 

  
Kamukura really hated these eyes of his. Every time he looked at someone it was like he could see them naked, he understood every scratch on the surface of their body, every scar left behind, every flaw.    
  
“Hey, she’s just trying to help you.” Kamukura finally spoke up. They must not have noticed he was sleeping. He had a tendency to go quiet and stare at the walls for long periods of time.    
  
“More like she’s trying to help herself.” Matsuda grabbed both cheeks and pinched them hard. Even if he had a terrible mouth, he could never bring himself to physically raise a hand to someone who had been abused so much as Mikan. So, he punished her by pulling at her cheeks. “Hey, don’t you know the psycho nurse schtick has been done before.”   
  
“I’m not an original?” Tsumiki said crying out.    
  
“You really need to get along with others better,” Kamukura said, looking to Matsuda.    
  
“But, if other people start liking me I might start to like myself. Gross.” 

“Why do you always have to act like the worst version of yourself in front of other people?”    
  
“If you suggest I have a hidden heart of gold I’ll kill you, I swear to god.”    
  
“Matsuda-kun, you’re so kind.” Mikan said, joining in.   
  
“Fuck off.” 

Matsuda could stand being insulted all day, but compliments genuinely seemed to unnerve him.

“He’s just shy. He’s afraid to let other people see his good side.” Hinata, kept going.    
  
“How many crimes against humanity do I have to commit before people stop calling me a good person?” Matsuda said, his head in his hands.    
  
“You’re calling me a crime against humanity? That’s so cold.” Kamukura said, as Mikan leaned against his shoulder.   
  
“It’s a crime against humanity that I reprogrammed your personality into someone so annoying.” Matsuda said as he pulled his hair back away from his eyes. It had gotten even longer. Long black, greasy, uncombed hair, him and Matsuda were beginning to resemble each other. “Hey, you don’t even have a personality, so how do you manage to be so irritating?”    


“Please like me, daddy. If you don’t like me, I'll have issues." 

Matsuda looked like the vein in his forehead was going to burst. “I should have chosen Komaeda for the project. I regret everything.”    
  
“Too late now. You’re stuck with me.”    
  
The reason the monster killed all of Frankenstein’s loved ones, was because he wanted him all to himself. If he wanted the doctor to love him, he should have locked him in the lab until he had no choice but to love him. It’s because he let the doctor run away that the monster was left all alone.    


  
Mikan suddenly wrapped her arms around Kamukura’s neck. Hinata was so used to having Mikan shove her breasts in his face by this point he barely reacted. “Matsuda-kun, don’t say that to him. You two are always fighting, and saying things you don’t really mean to each other. Mean words hurt, you know!”    
  
“Would you quit spoiling him already?” Matsuda said, looking away. As usual he was surprised, and slightly jealous of Mikan’s willingness to cling to people. He would never allow himself to do that. “If someone’s acting like a dumbass I’m going to call them a dumbass.”   
  
“Wh-what about the way you’re acting right now.”   
  
“Well, obviously I’m the biggest dumbass. But, we already know that. We don’t need to devote any more time to me insulting myself.”    
  
“He’s become self aware, how dangerous.” Kamukura muttered under his breath. 

“Y-you two should get along!” Mikan said, still holding Kamukura defensively like he was a puppy, and not the most dangerous person in the room. “Everybody already knows you two like each other. There’s no reason to fight, I hate fighting…”    
  
“Tsumiki, yes, we get it, you have family issues.” Matsuda looked like he was trying so hard to be cold. He bit his lip hard, and twisted his face up in a pained expression. “Go find someone else to play house with. You and I didn’t do one single thing to help Hinata-kun when he needed it. Just like everyone else, all we did was exploit him.”    
  
“Th-that’s not true.”    
  
“And there’s nothing you can do now to make up for that.”    
Broken boys don’t get fixed.    
Matsuda still held his hand over his eye like there was a crack in his skull. Someone had drilled a hole in his face. He wanted to fix his mother. He wanted to fix himself. That was why he studied medicine. He wanted people to get better. But, him and Mikan, who had both wanted to heal people had been the ones to hurt Hinata the most in the end.    
“So just leave him alone.”    


Matsuda left the room. Hinata wondered why they were talking about him like he was not in the room. Or maybe they were just talking about Hinata, the person he used to be, and Kamukura the dregs of Hinata was all that was left in the room.   
  


Mikan’s hands found his face. She really did like to touch people. It was like the person in front of her wasn’t really there, until she could reach out to touch them to confirm it. “You’re pale. Have you been getting the recommended amount of sleep? If you don’t sleep enough that could cause several complications with blood circulation.”    
  
“That’s just my aesthetic.” Hinata said, trying to smile at her. Sometimes he forgot what facial muscles he had to use to make that expression. “I was going for the vampire look.”   
  
“Vampires aren’t healthy at all. They don’t get enough sun. A lack of vitamin D can cause focus problems, mood problems, and contribute to poor sleep.”    
  
“Did you eat a book of medical facts or something?”    
  
That was a little bit hypocritical.    
They had cut off his scalp, and stuffed his head full of information. 

“Hinata-kun, you don’t take care of yourself.” Mikan draped her arms around his back. Her body practically hung off of his. Yet, there was no feelings between them. It was a longing for closeness that was unrequited on both sides. “But you still want to take care of others.”    
  
“Ugh, why am I hearing that from Mikan of all people?”    
  
“Wh-what’s so bad about being compared to me?” Mikan said, her voice rising to almost a scream.    
  
“Do I have to answer that question?”    
  
“Not if it’s going to hurt my feelings…” Mikan cupped her hands over her ears.    
  
“You know if you sought genuine help. If you tried to heal. Then you’d be able to help other people, without always making it worse, or making it about yourself in the end.” Hinata said, his mismatched eyes cold as they looked over her. Mikan almost felt like two different people were staring at her. “But you don’t trust anyone to help you. And, you don’t think you can heal.”    
  
“I… I wanted to help you.”   
  
Mikan was always crying.   
For the first time she looked truly on the brink of tears. She was trying to hold herself back, trying to be strong in that moment.

  
“Have you ever really loved anyone…?” Kamukura’s voice left his lips. He did not want to say this. Why was he saying this? Why was there so little emotion in his own voice? “Or, do other people exist just to make you feel loved?” 

  
He couldn’t forgive Mikan. He couldn’t forgive Matsuda.   
He wanted to forgive Mikan. He wanted to forgive Matsuda.    
Why was he… so damn insecure?    
Being one person wasn’t good enough for him. He had to be two.    
  
“I’m sorry…” Mikan replied meekly. She looked at her hands. Scalpels, bandages, they were tools that doctors used to heal people, but in Mikan’s hands they could only inflict harm. “Parents are no good, huh? All they do is push their flaws onto their own children.”   
  
She was still saying they were the same.    
Hinata’s skin felt irritated at that remark.    
  
“I wanted to be the exact opposite of her. I wanted to be someone who could take care of others.”

  
Mikan and Matsuda hurt him.   
Mikan and Matsuda were the only people who looked sorry for what they did to him.   
Kamukura knew everything.    
He could see everything.    
Except for himself.   
He had no idea who he was, or how he felt. 

 

🧸   
  
“There’s something wrong with you.”    
  
Mikan had said the moment she saw Ikkun.    
  
“Most people just say hi,” Ikkun sighed. Apparenlty he was used to hearing such things. After Hinata shooed Mikan away, Ikkun awkwardly scratched at a spot on the back of his neck. “Are all of your friends like this…?”    
  
“Yeah.” Hinata could not even deny it. He looked a little bit ashamed at least.    
  
“Where do people get all this energy? Seriously.” Ikkun complained like he was an old man, while he put two hands on his lower back and stretched.    
  
“I think you’re just too low energy.”   
  
“No, I’m pretty sure everyone else is the problem, not me.” It was hard to tell if Ikkun was joking or not, because he said everything in the exact same, exhausted tone of voice. He spoke like he was already half-asleep. Like he was unsure if everything happening in front of his eyes was a dream or not. “If everyone else relaxed I wouldn’t have to try so hard.”    
  
“You call that trying hard?” 

“Maybe?” 

It was hard to tell if he was joking or not.   
Everything he said sounded like a joke.   
It sounded like a lie.   
It sounded like nothing at all.    
He didn’t take anything seriously. He was afraid to take things seriously.    
  
Ikkun had asked him to help investigate the murder. Kamukura thought that was important as well, but it was difficult for him to be in the same room as the boy for too long. If he did, he started thinking about how he would much rather have Komaeda here with him.    
  
Komaeda would notice things that he could never notice. He would infuriatingly hold the answers just out of reach and taunt him. Kamukura was tired of playing chess against himself. He wanted someone else on the other side of the board.    
  
“I don’t think I like you.”    
  
“Okay…” Ikkun did not seem too bothered by that. “I’m not sure what people find so disagreeable about me. There’s nothing there to disagree with in the first place.”    
  
“People who say that are usually hiding something.”   
  
“Trust me, I’m not smart enough to hide anything.” Ikkun, continued to scratch. “I know how obvious I am, I know nobody’s buying it.”    
  
Kamukura had often wondered this. If Komaeda’s hair had never turned white, what would he look like? He would probably be impossible to see in the middle of a crowd. Ikkun looked exactly the same way, he was someone you could take from any crowd in the world. Ikkun could just start making things up about who he was, about what he wanted, he was that much of a blank space it was almost like anything he said was believable.    
  
Ikkun is Ikkun.    
Komaeda is Komaeda.    
  
There was no better way to express them. He knew who Komaeda was, the way his voice rasped, the sickly color of his skin, the exact coldness of his touch, but if he tried to describe that incredibly important person the words would just vanish.    
  
Komaeda who had such a strong sense of individuality, and yet seemed to be trying his best to live quietly, and be just like everybody else. Komaeda who only ever considered himself a nobody, but to Hinata was so clearly a somebody.    
  
“You don’t seem like the type who tries too hard.”   
  
“If I put too much effort into something I might actually feel good about myself for once.” Ikkun said, giving another exhausted sigh. Apparently he did not want that.    
  
“Then, why did you go to that school?”   
  
“I wanted to become somebody.”   
  
“And…?”   
  
“I didn’t.”   
  
“You’re okay with that.”    
  
“It’s easier being a nobody. More comfortable.” Ikkun tugged at the sweatshirt he was wearing. It was far too loose and baggy on him. Even though it was the middle of winter, Ikkun looked unbearably hot. “What’s wrong with wanting a little bit of comfort?”    
  
“Boring people, really do always pick the most boring choices.”    
  
“If only I could be a boring nobody. That’s what I’ve been aiming for.”    
  
He pinched the bridge of his nose like he was getting a headache.    
  
Hinata did not get it. He gave up everything, his body, his mind, just to be somebody. There was no way he could have continued to live on as Hinata Hajime. So, what was Ikkun doing in front of him? Why was he still even alive?    
  
“Don’t take it too seriously. All of that was just a joke.”    
  
“You have a terrible sense of humor.”    
  
“Really, because I have lots of friends, and they’re always laughing at my jokes.” Ikkun waited for a beat, and then said. “That was a lie, too.”   
  
“Obviously!”    
  
“I went to that school to escape. That’s the truth, maybe.”    
  
“Escape?”   


“She wouldn’t let me go.” Ikkun’s body looked so heavy. He did not need to swim, all he wanted was to stay afloat. He was trying so hard just to keep his head above the surface. He thought he could live that way. He thought if he learned to live alone that was fine, but other people kept crashing into him like waves.    
  
It was probably his fault.    
He was defective from the beginning. He was born with holes in his body. The water flooded into him, other people flooded into him even when he did not want to let them. He could do nothing but sink carried down by that weight.    
  
“Hey, that grumpy face-”   
  
“Matsuda-kun? It’s not that hard to remember people’s names you know.”    
  
“Sorry, my faulty brain makes me a bad person who doesn’t get along well with others.” He kept scratching, like he was trying to peel something off. “Are you going to let him go?”   
  
“Go where?”   
  
“Away from you.” 

  
Kamukura froze.   
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.   
Kamukura had nothing to say.   
Hinata had nothing to say.    
  
“You want him to choose you, don’t you?” Ikkun suggested, his voice almost hypnotic. The crooked way he stood, the way he was always looking at his feet on the ground. The way he assumed he was underneath everyone he met. It was impossible for Kamukura not to see Komaeda. “I don’t understand other people's feelings at all, and of course I’m critically lacking in self awareness, but I think I’m the same way.”    
  
“Nobody would want to choose you.”    
  
“Back at you.”    


Kamukura looked at the screen in front of him. Komaeda was staring at Kazuichi from afar. Hey, hey, look at me. Kazuichi threw you away. Nobody else deserves you as a friend. They don’t know how to treat you right. Yes, I threw you away too, but you were mine even when I threw you away. There’s nobody else who wants you. Nobody else understands your value.    


What a beautifully ornate, perfectly imperfect, clockwork creation Komaeda was, so complex that even God would have trouble understanding him even if he took all the pieces apart. He just wanted to hold that person in his hands and never let go. Who was it that kept pulling them apart? 

_It's you.  
It's always you. _   
  
“Do you know why my friends are so weird?”    
  
Ikkun shrugged.    
  
“They’re in despair. They all thought they were fixed, but they just stabilized a little bit. Pekoyama found Kuzuryuu again, Sonia found Gundham, Mikan was always like that and she’s used to hiding it. Not a single one of them stopped being in despair, but I let them think I was the one who cured them.”    
  
“Why?”    
  
“They said…”    
  
Kamukura saw Matsuda’s hand.   
He saw Mikan’s hand.   
A scalpel.   
A bandage.   
The people who said they were going to heal him, had hurt him the most.    
  
“They said they were going to help me, but they chose Junko in the end…” 

Ikkun sighed.    
All he ever did was sigh.   
He was composed of sighs.   
  
“Jeez, when you have no personality, everybody just dumps their baggage on you.”    
  
Ikkun said as he went to look at the dead body. He found that far more interesting than Kamukura anyway, like a work of art.    
  
“Why won’t everyone just leave me alone already?”    
  


 


	46. Breakup Verse

He did not want to lay flowers on the graves of the dead.   
He thought it was wrong for a murderer like himself to do so.   
  


🧸

 

A shopping mall in Towa City.   
They had been able to break in with Hitoshiki’s lock-picking knife. Hitoshiki at least was surprised the alarm did not go off at night, or that there was nobody security late at night.   
  
This was supposed to be one of those open-24 hour malls.   
  
“Where the hell did all the people go?”   
  
“Nyahaahaha, a murderer pretending he cares about other people. It’s quite funny.”   
  
“You got me there.” Zerozaki just shrugged.   
  
People avoiding the streets at night made sense, after all there was a serial killer on the loose. However, what Angie did not know and what he did not tell her was that when he was awake during the day, he still could not find anybody in the whole city.    
  
That strange wristband suddenly knocked her out with a sleeping drug when the sun rose in the morning, he had seen it happen two times already. He mostly didn’t tell her because he didn’t want to admit he had sat by her sleeping body the entire time.   
  
He just didn’t want his hostage to get away, damnit!   
  
Even if the entire city had disappeared before he had swam here (the bridge was blown up), Zerozaki did not care too much. All the world needed was him. He already had his values. He already decided he was going to stop pretending to be normal and live like big brother did.   
  
This was his breakup line with the rest of humanity.   
  
“Everyone should just leave me alone already.”   
  
“That waiter is really taking a long time with my order. The help is so incompetent these days…”   
  
As if she was speaking up just to contradict him, Angie called out to him from the far end of the cafeteria.Humanity wouldn’t leave him alone, and he couldn’t leave her alone. Annoying.  He jumped over the counter of the ice cream shop he had been digging around in, and walked back to her a tray in hand.   
  
  
One box of cookies.   
One cake.   
One jumbo parfait.   
  
He was a psycho killer.   
One that killed indiscriminately.   
A person who obviously did not get along with the rest of society.   
  
Yet, here he was getting dragged along by that girl’s whims. He had gotten her all the food she had asked for, grumbling the whole time.   
  
“Shaddup already, since when did you become the princess type?”   
  
“Atua says we’ll all be royalty in the kingdom of heaven.”   
  
“I thought you were a pacific islander, that shit sounds christian. Are you just making this up as you go along?”   
  
“You won’t be forgiven for slandering Atua’s good name.”   
  
“Yeah, I think the whole serial killer thing is more unforgivable than bad mouthing the head of some creepy cult.”   
  
The girl with white hair just like his, bent over towards the boy with the facial tattoo, and opened her mouth wide.   
  
“Aaaaah,” she said, and opened her mouth wide.   
  
“...”

  
“Hm? What’s the matter? Feed me already.”   
  
Hitoshiki cringed. 

  
“Feed yourself damnit!” 

  
“Too busy. Art. I need to make the art come out of my brain and put it on paper.” She had the art supplies he had stolen for her piled up, and was sitting strangely with her sketch-pad leaning against her knees. “It’s like I’m possessed.”   
  
“I think you’re trying a little bit too hard to be a creepy cult girl. Anyway, I ain’t touching ya.”   
  
“Why not?” Angie swung her head back and forth, carefree. Like there was nothing in that head of hers. There probably was, she just liked pretending there wasn’t. “Why? Why? Why?”   
  
“What a masterpiece.” 

  
Zerozaki Hitoshiki, the psycho killer, picked up a spoonful of ice cream and angrily shoved it into Angie’s mouth as if he was stabbing her. She greedily ate it all up and opened her mouth again. Her hands were too preoccupied sketching on the page in front of her. She really did seem to be in some kind of a trance. 

 

“Why do I feel like you’d starve to death if someone wasn’t there to wait on you hand and foot.”   
  
“If there is no bread, let them eat money!”   
  
“That’s way too cruel your highness! Think of the people for once!” What was he doing? Joking around like they were friends. Vomit. “What did I ever do to get stuck with someone like you? I mean, besides the killer thing.”   
  
“This is your chance for redemption. If you serve atua you may earn a place in heaven.”   
  
“If you’re in heaven then I’m fine going to hell, thanks!” 

 

“Hitoshiki, you sure are large-hearted.” It wasn’t clear whether she said it as a joke or as the truth. “You’ve been hiding that large heart of yours from me all along, haven’t you?”   
  
“I’m gonna kill you!” 

 

Don’t accuse a psycho killer of being a good person if you know what’s good for you.   
  
“Nyahahahaha - It was just a joke. There’s no way Atua forgive a murderer like you. You’ll be hated as long as you live.”   
  
“Thank god.”  Zerozaki almost looked relieved. 

  
Angie turned around the sketch she had been working on in her lap. As usual her art was just as horrifying as she was. He saw a pencil sketch of what looked like a forest covered in vines. The vines were so thick they looked no different from vines. In the center of the drawing there was a tree, with a severed head. In the head’s over-extended jaw there was an apple. It was difficult to tell if that kind of drawing took place in heaven or hell. There were flowers growing all around the tree where the man’s head was strung up, as if she was bleeding red flowers.   
  
“Look, it’s you.”   
  
“It’s ugly as hell.”   
  
“Then, I captured you perfectly. Ugly, unloved, and most certainly going to hell.”   
  
She said everything in such a cheerful voice, Zerozaki swore she must be snorting sugary pixie sticks like they were blow. 

 

“Still, it’s not very nice to criticize my art.”  
  
“Your art’s shitty.”   
  
“My art is my feelings, ya?”   
  
“Your feelings are shit, then.”   
  
“...I don’t like you right now. Atua is mad at you, understand?” She stood up suddenly and crawled over the table. Her hands instantly found his face.It was like she could not see the boundaries between people at all, the invisible wall between himself and others her hands tore through like it was nothing more than paper. “Have you ever thought it’s not my art’s fault. Maybe it’s your fault for being born with such an ugly face. See, see?”   
  
He inhaled her scent.

Salty, like the ocean breeze was clinging to her.  
Even though she was a far away from her home.   
She should be there, anywhere but here, far away from here.   
  
And when he was close enough that he could see every detail of her face.   
Her dark skin, the colorless hair that fell in spider’s silk threads, the way her eyes slightly widened when she was interested in what was in front of her, those eyes that were far too pale a blue, a sickly blue, a dying blue, maybe a dead blue.   
  
When he was close enough to her face he started thinking about all the ways that he could kill her. Pull her tongue out with his fingers and cut it out. Gauge out both of her eyes and crush them. He could drag his knife along her scalp, and take that white hair for himself. He wanted to make those wide eyes, go even wider.   
  
“Hey, hey, HItoshiki? What’s up? Whatcha thinkin?”   
  
“Too close, damnit!”   
  
“Cuz I want you to focus on me. Wow! I can see myself in your eyes! I look red.”   
  
He could make her even redder. “Seriously, back up.”   
  
“What? Why? Why why why?”   
  
Completely innocent.   
Completely free of sin.   
Frolicking about.   
Dancing in the garden.   
Naked, and not ashamed.   
Always smiling.   
Like she didn’t know how to do anything else.   
Almost like she was broken.   
Colorless hair, blue eyes, almost like she had somehow faded.   
Flying about.   
Like she was mistakable for a pixie, like she wasn’t even real, the living embodiment of a fairy tale.   
Freely expressing her emotions, laughing, getting short tempered, demanding things out of him, being selfish, doing whatever she wanted, and then looking at him again with that joyful smile.   
  
What ever his feelings for her were, he wanted to paint her red. If she really was an angel, a messenger from god that had fallen into this world, he wanted to damage her irreversibly. He wanted to pluck every feather from her wings, he wanted to rip her wings  from her back until two bloody holes were all that remained.   
  
“What do you mean why? You’re really close to me, and…”   
  
I want to kill you.   
  
“I don’t mind. I wanna be closer to you. Nyahahaha. There, now you’re closer to me.”   
  


Crack.   
  
Zerozaki hit her hard in the center of her face, enough to break her nose. She flew back from the difference in strength between the two of them alone. The table was knocked over, the glass her ice cream parfait was in fell to the floor and shattered.   
  


Angie, blood running down her mouth and drip, drip, dripping down that wide smile she always wore. She simply stood up once more. He wondered if someone else had hit her like this before. If all she did was smile back at them like she was doing now.   
  


“Huh? What’s up with that?” 

  
  
“I.. I’m allergic to people.” Hitoshiki said as he looked down at the broken glass. Angie stepped on it, barefoot, like she didn’t even feel pain. His jaw tightened. “That’s why he calls me ‘No Longer Human.’   
  
“Who?”   
  
“My biggest brother. He said that I was a headcase, even among a family of psycho killers. Lucky me, I’m special.”   
  
“I don’t think so.”   
  
“Huh?”   
  
“Just because you kill people doesn’t mean you’re not human. It just means you’re the worst and lowest kind of human possible.” 

 

What was he doing? Seriously. It was like he was having a conversation with another person, like he was trying to understand their feelings. Gross .He was seriously losing his mind. If he wasn’t a psycho killer than he was sane, and that was just boring.   
  
He seriously wanted to kick her. Zerozaki grinded his teeth like a wolf that had been denied his prey. His belly was empty. All he could think about was how he was starving. “Quit trying to be nice and insulting me in the same breath. Do you even hear yourself when you talk, jeez.”   
  
She didn’t hear him.   
  
“My ice cream! You spilled my ice cream. You’re the worst. God will punish you. I’ll never forgive you.”   
  
“Did you just call yourself god?”   
  
“Anyway-” She said ignoring him like usual. She started barking orders for him to get her more. It occurred to him he could simply cut her to pieces and be done with it. There was no reason for him to keep letting her follow him. The strings between them seemed hard to cut, and he had some pretty sharp knives.   
  
Fine, he would keep dancing as a puppet in her palm for a little bit longer.   
  
When he got to the freezer behind the store with Angie in tow, Zerozaki threw open the freezer to see.   
Another masterpiece.   
A half-frozen corpse.   
  


 

🧸

 

The corpse gripped its own face, which was frozen in an expression of grief. The hair, skin, and eyes of the face were completely intact and unblemished. You could almost believe the body had just woken from a nap, if its legs had not been severed at the knee were not sticking straight up from the frozen water. The most peculiar part of the corpse was the heart, which was stuffed into the mouth as if the head was taking a bite from it.   
  
“Hey, hey, who did this? What was the killer thinking? Hey, hey, who could do such an awful thing as murder!”   
  
Zerozaki noticed angie glaring at him.   
  
“How the hell am I supposed to know what the killer was thinking?”   
  
“Because you’re a killer. Shouldn’t that give you special insight?”   
  
“I don’t understand how I myself am feeling at any given time. How the fuck am I supposed to know what other people are feeling? I don’t understand people period.”   
  
“Nobody’s going to understand you either, because no-good people like you aren’t worth understanding.”   
  
Zerozaki ignored that. It wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. He stood over Angie for a moment, staring into her eyes. “You okay with this? You just saw a dead body.”   
  
“Eh? What’s it matter? That thing’s not a person.”   
  
“It used to be.”   
  
“No longer human.”   
  
Zerozaki thought they were overdoing it with the references now. “You sure you’re okay? If you cry I’m just going to laugh in your face.”   
  
“There’s nothing left. There’s no reason to be sad. To die is to disappear.”   
  
Just then a voice spoke up from behind them.   
  
“It was most likely a passion killing.” 

  
“Eh? Where the hell did he come from?”   
  
Takumi pointed to the several holes that had been cut into the chest. He mimed swinging a knife down in the air with his empty hands.   
  
“Cause of death was blood loss, but the killer lost control of themselves and kept stabbing long after the corpse was dead. Then, they must have regained their composure to elaborately preserve and decorate the body like this. Or, maybe the person who killed, and the person who put the body on display are two different people.”   
  
“You’re just a killing idiot huh…?”  Angie said, poking at the side of Zerozaki’s face. For a moment he thought about biting and snapping at her like a feral dog to get her to back off.   
  
Takumi kicked at the cooler. “What a wonderful way to die. I’m so jealous of dead bodies, they get to stay in a small boxes forever. I want a coffin.”   
  
“You look too much like a vampire already.”   
  
Munakata ran in the room after Takumi. Takumi had been able to sneak up on him, but the moment Munakata entered Zerozaki felt something like lightning striking him and overloading his nervous system.   
  


Takumi, slouching, suddenly spun around on his heel to face the both of them. He had bed head, and an incredibly tired expression on his face. “You… you’re a killer.”  
  


  
“Well, no shit.” Zerozaki said, as he reached into one of the many pockets of his tactical vest.   
Takumi kept his hands in his pockets the entire time.   
  
“I know who you are… because I…”   
  
Takumi kept his hands in his pockets the entire time. His face looked like he was staring into something unfathomably dark, and still trying to see some light. His eyes had seen far too much red.   
  
He still remembered trembling in that locker.   
His whole body shaking.   
With barely contained excitement.   
  
“Things like murderers, these sorts of odd cases… From the bottom of my heart.”   
  
He watched his own classmate’s blood spill all over the floor. His heart still beating, sprayed more and more blood around from the gaping wound in his chest. At that moment Takumi thought _this person is truly alive._

Until he saw people’s insides spilled all over the ground like that he was not sure they were real people. He had no idea how to prove that there was anything inside of them. People’s hands were so cold, but their blood was warm.   
  
Takumi bit his lip like.   
He was trying to stop himself.   
From falling in love.   
  
“Love beyond anything!” Takumi was smiling wide. Looking at such a face, Zerozaki even thought, _that’s what happiness must look like._ “But there’s no love at all in this murder.”   
  
“There’s no love at all in any murder.” Zerozaki said as he brought out his knife. “Even a psycho killer like me thinks you’re a weirdo.”   
  
“Why are you getting in the way?”   
  
“Why the hell are you stalking me?”   
  
“It’s not stalking. I’m just bad at communicating with others. I’m too awkward. I have no idea what to say when I’m around other people. So, I just watch from afar, and follow them, and watch them sleep at night. Okay, maybe it is stalking.”   
  
The moment Zerozaki lunged forward, at the exact same time in the exact same moment Takumi matched him.   
  
Their knives brought silver arcs through the air. Their strikes were both so fast that neither of them could make out the movements of the other. They were both working on instinct alone. If either of them stopped to think, if they hesitated, if they made one wrong move they would be cut.   
  
The two of them were dancing together on the edge of a knife.   
A dangerous dance.   
A dance between two people who loathed each other.   
Both wanted nothing more than to step on the toe of the other and let them fall.   
  
Takumi brought an arc over his head and slammed it down on where Zerozaki was, a moment ago as the boy had jumped to the side to get out of the way. Takumi’s eyes were blurry, like he was staring through a heat haze.   
  
He looked like he was lovestruck.   
He was not crying, but his eyes were shiny. Zerozaki had no idea a boy who looked half dead a second ago could feel so much emotion.   
  
“Zerozaki. You’re just like me, right? You love murder, it’s all you can ever think about…”   
  
“I think it’s boring.” Zerozaki said, catching his breath as he drew out a second knife to dual wield. “I don’t think there’s anybody on this earth like you, you freak.”   
  
“Oh. Um. Awkward. I suddenly want to die now.” Takumi acted like his middle school crush ahd just rejected his confession. All the blood drained from his face, and his expression deadened again. “There’s no love in this killing at all. This art, it’s just for shock value.The killer just wants attention. It has no depth. It’s lacking in something important.”   
  
“Eh? Who cares about any of that, I already said I didn’t…”   
  
“I’ll show you a masterpiece.”   
  
Takumi suddenly changed weapons. He kicked up a paint spreader that had been left on the ground, and wielded it in his hand like a knife. Zerozaki picked his knives up as well, only to realize a second too late he was not the target.   
  
He was trying to kill Angie.   
Why?   
Because he wasn’t strong enough to kill Zerozaki.   
  
Zerozaki watched her just stand there, smiling as always.   
How could she keep smiling?   
  
Before Takumi could bring the paint spreader down, a fist dug into his stomach and twisted. Munakata got in the way, and punched him hard enough to send him back against the wall.   
  
“I told you, I wasn’t going to allow you to kill anyone.”   
  
Takumi raised his head to meet Munakata’s eyes.   
Even though he was afraid to.   
Even though he knew Munakata was disappointed in him.   
  
“Lame. You’re a no-good killer. You’re not supposed to be a good person.”   
  
Zerozaki was sure the two of them were about to have a touchy feely scene, but he really did not care about the feelings of other people, so he just took Angie and ran.   
  
Even when he thought they were far enough away that Munakata and Takumi would not catch up, Zerozaki was grinding his teeth in annoyance again.   
  
What was he doing?   
  
The question he had asked himself over and over again today. Now that he thought about it, it was all her fault. He was supposed to live entirely for the sake of his own whims, and he found himself being dragged along by the whims of some girl he just met.   
  
It was like he had been tossed into a river, he was pulled underneath the surface by her current and drowned.   
  
He needed to reset.   
If somebody were to ask him why he killed people, he would give some bullshit philosophical answer.   
Then, if he were to really try to honestly answer.   
He would say to prove his own existence.   
Killing was all he knew how to do.   
KIlling was the only reason he had family.   
He tried to have a normal life once, it did not work out. His entire middle school class gone, and he dropped out.   
  
He did not know how to be anything other than a psycho killer. He realized a long time ago that being a killer he would not be able to make friends, to live the same lives other people did, that all that was waiting for him at the end of this life was a grisly death.   
  
It was like his entire life was on a train tracks, and the only thing he could hope for was a derailment that killed him in the process.   
  
He needed to go back to being a psycho killer. Other people just got in the way. They distracted him. He did not have friends, he did not have a normal life, but he had that name Zerozaki, and even a no-good brat like him had a family.   
  
“Quit following me around already.”   
  
“Huhhhh?”   
  
“I’ll seriously kill you if you take one more step near me.”   
  
“Why are you afraid?” Afraid? He wasn’t afraid. She was the one who should be afraid. He was going to kill her. Crack open her skull. Scoop out her brain. Stomp on her face until nothing was left. Completely destroy the image of her. Take a paint spreader and stab it into the canvas, and rip it apart until the painting was ruined. Angie suddenly ran forward and jumped on his back. “Atua and I will gently embrace you.”

 

“I said leave me alone! I’m not going to do what you want, anymore.”   
  
Zerozaki threw her off of him.   
For a moment after Angie landed she just stared up at him.   
Her smile was gone.   
It was the first time Zerozaki felt like she had seen him. Angie, all alone on an island. In a world that was just her.   
  
Then, she sprinted away from him.   
He walked in the opposite direction until he lost sight of her.   
  
Zerozaki sighed in relief. “Finally, I can be alone again.”   
  
He turned around to see three people standing behind him.”   
  
“Why do I open my goddamn mouth? The universe just loves to prove me wrong.” 

 

🧸

 

  
The last thing Zerozaki remembered was being clocked on the back of the head and thinking _that girl hits harder than big bro._ When he woke up again, he was in a karaoke room. He liked karaoke, he especially liked to sing hit songs by female popstars. He really belted it out even though he had a terrible singing voice.   
  
However, he did not like the fact that he was tied up again. He slowly raised his head to see Kurokami Medaka sitting across from him.   
  
“Good evening. I’ve always wanted to go to karaoke with a friend.”   
  
Hitoshiki dislocated his shoulder, which was how he got out of these ropes the first time, just enough to grab a knife and start to saw himself free. The moment he was he lunged at her. He was like a wolf ready to sink his canines into her throat.   
  
“So it seems you don’t want to get along with me.”   
  
He was shuddering. His breath suddenly cut short. As if a shinigami had come to steal it away. He remembered this girl, she looked angry the last time he saw her. Now, she had calmed down, but that was somehow even more scary than her rage.   
  


She dodged every single swing of his knife.   
Like she really wasn’t there.   
Like he was fighting a ghost.   
Then, she twisted his arm back and pinned him to the ground.   
  
“I just wanted to talk with you.” Medaka said, looking down at him with hollow eyes. “Why are you killing people in this city?”   
  
“I already told ya I haven’t killed anybody in like a week! I’m innocent!” 

  
Zerozaki knew that was hardly credible but…   
  
“I saw the body you left behind in the mall. What did you feel when you were killing them? What made you think it was okay to kill someone?”   
  
Nothing.   
He felt nothing when he killed someone. The act itself made him feel hollow.   
He knew. A good person. Wouldn’t be able to kill other people this easily.   
  
“I’m not the one that painted that masterpie-”   
  
Zerozaki froze.   
For a moment his face was just like a corpse.   
Then he melted, and started crying crocodile tears.   
  
“L-listen, it was me okay. B-but uh, I feel really bad about it. I never wanted to be a killer. I just, umm, have some super sad backstory that explains all of this. Yeah, if you saw it you’d cry.”   
  
Medaka looked at him her face unchanging.   
  
“Is that so. That’s heartbreaking. You poor soul. I’ll help you out. Let’s get along, so please cooperate with me.”   
  
“Uh, sure…”   
  
“I have a few things to ask before we can get along. How many people did you kill?”   
  
“Whazzat matter?”   
  
“I’m just checking the precise number. You’re going to get some proper punishment and turn over a new leaf. If you do that we can be friends.”   
  
“Punishment? Listen, I’m a sadist not a masochist so-”   
  
Before Zerozaki could respond with anything else, her entire hand was shoved into his mouth. Zerozaki immediately knew why, to prevent him from attempting suicide by biting his tongue. Zerozaki recognized finally the dull shine in her eyes.   
  
  


It was the same as light reflecting off the silver of a knife.   
It was the expression of a weapon.   
She only thought about cutting.   
That wasn’t the expression a human would make.   
  
“If you take people’s lives and receive no punishment, the people who got killed will never be satisfied. I’m going to torture you just according to the number of people you killed. When you have endured all that pain and suffering you will be resolved of your crimes.”   
  
Zerozaki wondered how he was supposed to react. A human might scream. They would try to fight back or run away. A killer would try to kill the girl before they were killed. A cornered wolf would sink his teeth into whatever what was in front of them.   
  
He thought about that girl.   
Why do you.   
Keep smiling.   
When there’s nothing to smile about.   
  
“Whatever.” Zerozaki wondered how he kept running into people crazier than he was. It must just be bad luck. “Get it over with already.”   
  
He remembered rain.   
  
There were two men in front of him. He stood on top of a building. They were both his brothers, big brother, and Kishishiki. His only family member was big brother. He had to play nice with other members of the family or else he would be thrown out. He was a problem child after all, even among the notorious family of psycho killers.   
  
Imagine being the black sheep of that family.   
The family shame.   
Oh wait, Hitoshiki already was.   
That should give you an idea of how far from humanity he was.   
  
Hitoshiki stared at a group of three children playing in the streets.   
  
“What are you thinking about?” Kishishiki asked him.   
  
“Trick question, I don’t think.”   
  
Kishishiki sighed. He didn’t appreciate his sense of humor at all.  “He’s just a brat. He’s not ready for this.”   
  
“He’s a zerozaki.” Big brother said. 

If Kishishiki had his way then Hitoshiki would have been thrown out. Even though he was a middle schooler. Hitoshiki ignored him, perhaps those words would hurt a normal child, one that desired something beyond killing.   
  
Humans are social animals.   
They make connections.   
They need those things to live.   
Being a sheep in the flock was a good thing, it was survival.   
He was not above the crowd for not having those things.   
He was somebody who had failed to join the flock. 

 

“Don’t show your blood thirst until the moment you kill them. There’s no need for you to hesitate or get emotional. You’re nothing more than a cold blooded killer.”   
  
“I know.”   
  
“Just one clean kill. It’s rude to make other people clean up after your messes. I raised you better than that.”   
  
“Yeah, yeah quit nagging me.”   
  
He jumped from the roof, and ran down the side of the building. When the car was parked, he approached looking like an innocent child. The last thing the man getting in the car saw was the brief flash of light from his knife.   
  
His brother never gave him any toys to play with. He played with a knife instead.   
  
Kishishiki and Big Brother had been observing him. After he finished getting rid of the body, he waited in an alleyway for them to catch up with him.   
  
Kishishiki and Big Brother really were like his two older brothers. He had no blood relation to them. Nobody in the Zerozaki family had any blood relation to one another, they awoke to their killing instincts and found each other. All of them had tried to be normal at one point in their life or another, only to realize they were psycho killers, and go looking for the family.   
  
All except for him.   
His parents were two family members who had fallen in love. He was born into this life, and raised by big brother.   
  
He watched other children play in the alleyway. If he had two different parents, he might be laughing like them. If he had been born to a different family.   
  
He would not know who he was.   
He would not recognize himself.   
He needed to stop thinking about that.   
  
One of the kids kicked the ball too far, and it landed in front of his feet.   
  
“Hey! Pass the ball!”   
  
Hitoshiki walked over and put his foot on it. Before he could, suddenly Kishishiki was there. “I told you, he’s nothing more than a brat.” Kishishiki looked at the children behind Hitoshiki. “He allowed himself to be seen, because he was distracted.”   
  
Hitohsiki braced himself expecting to be hit.   
Kishishiki walked past him.   
  
“You’re nothing more than a psycho killer. You can’t get along with other people. Because you’ll kill them.”   
  
“That’s not necessary-” Big bro spoke up.   
  
“You’re spoiling him again.”   
  
KIshishiki executed the three witnesses.   
Hitoshiki could not describe it in detail even if he wanted to, because big brother had covered his eyes. Big brother’s fingers were not removed until after they were already dead. All three children had their skulls beaten in by a bat covered in nails. Their blood was slowly being washed away by the rain.   
  
The Zerozakis were still humans. Even though they felt an impulse to kill, all of them had normal human emotions, they knew what they were doing was wrong. All of them to a certain degree expressed a disgust with themselves, and a disgust for killing.   
  
All except for him, apparently.   
Zerozaki HItoshiki.   
Laughed.   
As if he were truly enojying himself.   
As if he had tasted happines for the first time.   
  
“What a riot!”   
  
Kishishiki watched him with his sickly green eyes. “That kid’s less human than the rest of us.” After that day his oldest brother started calling him _No Longer Human - Zerozaki._   
  
  


But that girl, said he was a human.  
No matter what he did she just kept talking to him normally.   
That smile of hers was so annoying.   
He was going to punch her hard until it was broken, and make it disappear from her face the next time he saw her.   
  
In the present moment Hitoshiki was lying on the ground. His entire upper body, including his face, had turned completely purple.   
  
Although, none of his bones had broken.   
And all his joints were intact.   
Even his internal organs - were not damaged in the slightest.   
He had felt unbearable pain, without losing consciousness, and without going into shock. That girl was a genius at torture.   
  
She would have kept going, if Sonia had not suddenly burst into the room and grabbed her. “Medaka, this is hella wrong!” 

 

That slang was hella wrong.   
  
“This isn’t like you at all. I thought you liked people. Why do you want to hurt them?”   
  
“Why did you keep hurting me?” Medaka asked, looking back at her. “If it’s not okay for me to do this, then why was it okay for you to stab me when all I wanted to do was help you? Why do they get to keep hurting me?” 

 

Sonia did not have an answer for those questions. Neither did Hitoshiki, who when he realized he was still capable of moving his body, got up and started to leave.  
  
Once again he was detective an emotional scene was about to happen and he wanted no part in it. Other people’s feelings. They should just keep their feelings to themselves. Leave him out of it.   
  
Hitoshiki looked at the blood he had spit up in his fingertips. It looked like individual flower petals he had spit up.   
  
He didn’t feel enough to bring a single flower to the graves of the people he killed.   
If he touched a flower.   
It would probably wilt.   
He killed flowers and people indiscrimminately.   
  
Zerozaki realized he was back in the streets once more, and continued to drag his feet behind him.   
  
“Hey!”   
  
He wondered if a single person would leave a flower on his grave.   
  
“Hey, hey, hey, hey!”   
  
Not that he deserved it.   
But he was really going to go through life without making a single friend, huh?   
What a failure.   
  
“What a riot.”   
  
He muttered to himself.   
Then suddenly.   
  
“Yahoo! I wonder what we’ll get up to today!”   
  
Angie was right there behind him, like he had never screamed at her to go away. “My bad for trying to get rid of you, I guess.” He said, as he put his hand over his face hoping she would not see the bruises.   
  
He did not want another person sympathizing with his pain.   
How embarrassing.   
  
“Huh? Why do you look like you’re apologizing? You should apologize for being human scum first.”   
  
“Nah.”   
  
“Well, whatever. I’m already over what happened. Atua has already forgiven you.”   
  
“Yeah, but aren’t you pissed?”   
  
“My feelings don’t matter. Atua has forgiven you, so it’s fine.” She said, before jumping on his back once more. Zerozaki felt that through his entire body. He was seriously going to kill her later. She didn’t think of a single person besides herself. “You’re weird.”   
  
“You don’t say.”   
  
The human failure sighed.   
  
“Nobody’s ever gotten angry at me like that before.”   
  
Her parents never scolded her.   
They never so much as looked at her. All they saw was the vessel for their own religion.

"Why's your skin so purple?"

"Don't start paying attention to other people that's out of character."

"Why? Why? Why?"

"I'm just allergic to people."

She was completely clueless. 

And he didn't plan to tell her what he had just done.

“Are you having fun?” Zerozaki said, glancing back at her. He knew she was going to go back to bossing him around, and yet he already seemed to have accepted that.   
  
“Yep, I’m always having fun.”   
  
Like she didn’t feel any negative emotions at all.   
She didn't even notice he was covered in bruises.   
Like she was incapable of seeing pain.  
Like she couldn't feel pain anymore.   
She was incapable.  
She was numb.  
She lost something important to her.  
Something every person needs.   
But she was fine.  
She was laughing through life, anyway.   
  
"Life is such a riot." 


	47. Love Song

 

“There’s something wrong with my head.”    
  
“You’ve finally realized. Your character arc is over. You can go home now.” Kamukura responded in a dull voice.   
  
Matsuda was sitting there shirtless on the examiner’s table. The monster was the doctor, and now he was the monster. Kamukura was examining him like a patient. His eyes cold, clinical, well they were always cold no change there.    
  
Matsuda clawed at the bandages around his eye. “What did you do to my head? Who even taught you how to do brain surgery? He was probably an idiot.”   
  
“You taught me brain surgery.”   
  
“See, my point exactly.” Itch, itch. Matsuda kept itching at his eyes.    
  
“Do I need to get you one of those cones that dogs wear?” Kamukura said, watching him pry at the bandages with disinterest.    
  
“Oh yeah, you’re just dying to put a leash on me, aren't you? Control freak.”   
  
“Please keep your fetishes off the operating table.”    
  
“I’ll kill you.”    
  
“Weird, I thought you were trying to kill me with all those surgeries. It turns out you were just incompetent.”    
  
Kamukura bantered back, but he felt like he had gone a bit too far. Every time he heard the word incompent, he saw Matsuda nervously bristle. Kamukura should not lie. He should not say things he did not believe. Matsuda was not useless, not to him.    
  
Kamukura explained to him calmly what had happened in the time Matsuda could barely remember. Matsuda took Nanami away to bury her somewhere private. He came back and collapsed. Kamukura the only one still conscious did emergency surgery on Medaka, and Kamukura to reattach her hand, and close both of their wounds.   
  
He removed the obstruction in Matsuda’s eyes, and noticed no internal damaging. Then, he watched the two of them recover until they regained consciousness. Matsuda was somehow convinced that Kamukura had scraped the inside of his brain on purpose.    
  
  


“I’m hearing sounds and seeing things that aren’t there. That’s consistent with audiovisual processing area brain damage-”    
  
“You know, getting stabbed in the ribs and losing all the blood in your body would damage your brain pretty bad too. That’s not my opinion, that’s Hinata’s.”   
  
“Well tell Hinata to shut the fuck up.”    
  
“He said you shut the fuck up.”   
  
“No, you shut the fuck up.” Matsuda forced himself to breathe to calm down. “Wait, Hinata’s not inside your head you’re just messing with me.”    
  
“A one in a kind genius. A prodigy brain surgeon. The youngest person ever to complete his residency.”    
  
He was supposed to be competent. He was supposed to be in control of these things. He could not be damaged, because he had become a doctor to fix other people’s damage. Kamukura, Komaeda, they were both his patients, he was the one who had to keep it together.    
  
Kamukura did not understand. He did not understand because he was the monster, not the doctor. 

 

He was a doctor, he was a doctor, he was a doctor. He wanted to fix people because his mother couldn’t be fixed. But, then a girl slid a knife between two of his ribs and he was shattered.    
  
However, the problem with that wound isn’t that it was ugly. The problem is that it is still a wound and not a scar. It’s still a gaping wound,a nd it’s going to stay that way. But instead of blood, it’s his very own self that is bleeding out. “Something” that is needed to live. He was dwindling, every dwindling.    
  
“I’m not broken.” Matsuda said gripping his eye as he felt another sharp pain like an ice pick being driven into his skull. “I’m not like you and Kumagawa. I don’t spend all my time licking my own wounds. I’m trying to keep my head on straight here, I’m trying to think of somebody besides myself for once.”    
  
Matsuda said.   
And Kamukura got angry at him.    
And then he kicked him out of ihs room to sulk.    
  
  


  
  


🦔

 

『Hey, Matsu-chan.』   
  
“If you try to give me a nickname I’ll slice your goddamn head open again. Don’t test me, my fingers are feeling all tingly.” 

 

『Hey, Matsuda-chan.』

 

Drip. Drip. Drip. 

 

His brain melted into a soup of grey matter and brain cells, and slowly, slowly, dribbled out of his ears. No wait, that was just the old sink in the bathroom next to the room he was sitting in. There was a crack somewhere in the pipes, and water leaked out. 

 

If someone cracked the glass in his eyes, tears would flow out just like that. That was why, Matsuda could not have a single crack, not a single flaw. The water was already spilling out from the sink and onto the floor. Matsuda tilted his head and saw Kumagawa’s face appear in the puddle.    
  
Kumagawa’s eyes, his watery eyes, they were like a lake with water so transparent that he forgot that there was water inside. They were such innocent eyes they made Matsuda almost forget that innocence was not allowed to exist in this world, almost. 

 

『It’s fun to talk to you. Most people don’t listen to my nonsense.』   
  
“I don’t talk to you because I’m too stupid to ignore a guy like you.”

 

『But you don’t like doing this kind of thing, right?』   
  
It was like those eyes saw through him.    
Like he was looking at his brain from the inside. 

Like Kumagawa was the one holding the scalpel, and he had suddenly become the helpless patient under the knife.    
You know more brain surgery is performed without localized anesthesia.    
Because there are no nerve cells to indicate pain.    
You could have fingers groping around in your skull and you wouldn’t even feel it.    
  


“Uh, no, I…” 

 

『You don’t like opening to other people, right?』   
  
“No, I just don’t like talking to you. I love people. I love every human being except for you.” 

 

Kumagawa Misogi smiled. Those smiles were like more cracks appearing in his face, traveling up the sides of his face. His smile was just a permanent scar on his face. There were cracks in the side of Kumagawa’s head, but instead of blood, or brain matter, all that poured out was water.    
  
『That’s a lie.』

 

“No, it’s true. I don’t hate it. I actually kind of like fooling around with everyone like chums. I just love how my number of brain cells seems to reduce whenever I’m around other people.”    
  
It’s a scientific marvel.   
He should study it.    
  
『It’s a lie.』   
  
“Yes, it is.” 

 

Kumagawa snickered. He laughed so hard he seemed to spit up blood. But all he did was wipe his lips like nothing happened. He smiled, but his eyes did not smile. Eyes that never smiled. Blue eyes, just like his.    
  
What was wrong? What reason could he have for looking so sad when he was always laughing it up. He always thought Kumagawa was more carefree than this. 

 

『Yasuke-chan, you’re really a kind person.』

 

Kumagawa was like.   
Spilled wine.    
And a broken glass.    
  
『I want to be more like you.』   
  
“But you can’t.” 

 

『Mm-hmm.』   
  
“To be honest I considered myself the stupidest person on earth before I met you. To get down to your level, I’d probably need to whack myself in the head with a hammer a few times and call that brain surgery.” 

  
  
  


『Uh-huh』The sink was overflowing, and Matsuda could already feel the water lapping at his ankles. His socks were wet. He felt cold, and his body felt too heavy. 『I wanted to grow up into a kind person. But here I am at eighteen years old and all I do is think of myself. I’m sure it’ll go on like that. No matter how many years pass, no matter how many decades, I’ll never be a kind person, until the day I die.』   
  


“Well, that’s your fault isn’t it? Have you thought  _ maybe I should stop being such a little bitch about every goddamn thing _ .” 

 

『Nope, I’ve never thought that.』   
  
“Oh, that’s right you can’t think. Sorry, that was insensitive of me.” 

 

『Say, Matsuda-chan..』

 

Ripple, ripple, ripple.    
Butterflies tried to land on the surface of the water, and they caused it to ripple. Blood was flowing out of the side of Kumagawa’s skull like sweet nectar. He was like a cracked glass continually leaking out the contents, spilling it all out everywhere. The butterfly landed in his ear, and stuck its tongue down its ear canal, lapping it all up. Kumagawa did not even notice the crown of butterflies he wore on his head. 

 

Their wings were beating at his face, kissing him all over. Matsuda felt jealousy stab the spot in his rib cage, and then pull out the knife so the wound would be fatal. He touched his side, but he would rather if Kumagawa’s warm hands were the ones to hold him there. 

 

Kumagawa looked wet. His shirt was soaked all the way through. Matsuda could see the hidden scars underneath in full detail underneath his transparent shirt. His clothes were practically clinging to the thin frame of his body. If Matsuda were to lean against him, it would be like he was not even wearing those clothes. The thin layers of fabric that separated and acted as a buffer between their bodies would be gone. 

 

His hip bones were particularly pronounced, and so fragile looking, like the slightest touch would cause his lower body to travel. What would it be like to be the hands that caused Kumagawa to break apart into messy pieces underneath him. Kumagawa’s body, so jagged and sharp, like they were cliffs on the side of the sea shore. What it would be like to be the wave that crashed into him.    
  
His whole self looks sopping wet. Water falls off of him, and Matsuda observes it’s journey down the concave curves that make up his torso. Looking at Kumagawa from head on, is like a face full of cold water.  _ This is what it’s like to kiss ice.  _ His lips are going to turn blue. 

  
  
The water level reaches their heads now. Matsuda started to panic, he struggled to breathe. Kumagawa just smiles the same as always. He opens his mouth, and speaks underwater like he’s got a pair of goddamn gills. 

 

『Have you ever felt like as a human, you’re damaged goods?』   
  
He hated Kumagawa.   
What a slimeball.   
How comical.   
How terribly unseemly.    
  
“I haven’t.” 

 

『It feels like even if you cut me open you wouldn’t be able to tell what’s wrong with me, Matsuda-chan I guess it’s more or less lethal at this point, like a fatal wound I guess. I feel bad, making you waste time on a terminal case like me.』   
  
No.    
No don’t ask me that.   
That just leads to a dead end. Thinking you can do something for others is just a happy dream. But once you wake up and realize that it was all fake. It was a happy dream, but you were the only one dreaming and the only one watching that dream, and that makes it lonely. The only time I was ever happy was in a dream with Junko. But, when she took that dream away from me I didn’t fall into despair like she wanted me to. There was just nothing left. There’s nothing to cry about. All that’s left is a white void. A zero. Once you wake up from the dream there’s nowhere left to go. 

 

『Hey, you liked Izuru-chan didn’t you? You thought he was fine just the way he was, even if he was useless.』   
  
“...Yeah, I’m not going to kiss his lazy perfect ass. Even though I’m sure he’d just love that. Even though you do nothing, we all love you..”

 

『So, why did you do it?』   
  
“I cammed about a thousand personalities into his head. You think he could just pick one. But, no, he has to be a boring, personality-less piece of shit. That’s not my fault that’s on him-”

 

No matter how many times he cut his skull open, Hinata trusted him. He grew angry at people really easily, and smiled just as easy. He would look down and meekly apologize after they fought. He was so normal, like a breath of fresh air.More than anything else, he came to like Matsuda.    
  


A normal boy. A normal life that Matsuda had never been allowed to have. He thought, a person like this should not exist. A person so weak cannot be allowed to exist. Not when he… not when he had been abandoned. That was why, he broke that thing. He completely stomped on its skull. 

 

『Why did you break him?』   
  
Hinata Hajime was dead. He destroyed the irreplaceable real one.   
And then that boy became strong. A boy no one needed became a boy everyone needed. 

 

『You were happy-』   
  
“Fuck you, I’m never happy.” 

 

『You were satisfied. It was the greatest feeling. It cheers you up just thinking about it. You weren’t lonely anymore. Because there was someone just as broken as you were now.』   
  
“...”   
  


『It’s weird when you don’t mouth off to everything like a smartass. It’s like we’re being serious, that’s just awkward, I hate it.』   
  
“I’m not like you.” Matsuda stood up suddenly. He grabbed the boy in front of him by the sweatshirt he was wearing and pinned him on the bed in front of him. He felt like doing something violent. Strangulation was so romantic. “I’m nothing like you. Nobody would ever choose a useless option like you, Kumagawa, and nobody wants to deal with your damage so quit making it everybody else’s problem!”    
  
Incompetent people.    
Helpless people.   
Helpless children.   
Children no one wanted.    
They needed to stop causing problems for other people. He just wanted. He just wanted to fix one person. He became a doctor to fix people. He was supposed to help them so why did he…    
  
The room was flooding. He would drown. He would drown. And he saw Kumagawa offer up his hand, but he was afraid to take it. He wasn’t pitiable. He was. He was a person with talent. He was somebody needed.    
  
“Who is Kumagawa…?”   
  
Matsuda’s fingers suddenly went slack. When he looked forward, a pair of yellow eyes were staring back at him. They were completely incompatible with Kumagawa’s blue eyes, it was like oil floating on the surface of water.    
  


This boy, was not smiling, was not smiling, was not smiling.   
He was not Kumagawa. 

 

He had been talking to Ikkun the entire time thinking he was Kumagawa. “Are you seriously telling me my personality is so boring you thought you were talking to someone else?” Ikkun sighed.    
  
That’s not very nice, Matsuda-kun.   
Everybody is special in their own way. You’re all unique player characters in my game. 

An anti-social person like you is never going to make any friends if you keep looking away from people like this. 

 

Ikkun seemed a little bit peeved that he had been mistaken for someone else. Well, he might not have had an identity but he still had feelings. Ikkun sighed. “Nonsense. I’m so tired of putting up with everyone else’s nonsense and shenanigans. You’re all making me look like a functional human being in comparison, and I hate that.” 

  
  


🦔

 

“I brought Medaka-chan back! Now we can all use the power of friendship to defeat evil.” 

 

“I can’t believe we’ve met a worse manga-for-brains than Kumagawa.” Matsuda said a little hypocritically as he was reading a manga instead of making eye contact. He looked up to see that Sonia was dragging Medaka along thrown over her shoulder. “Jeez, I keep forgetting that you’re the princess of being fucking jacked.” 

  
Sonia decided to take that as a compliment.    
  
“Hey, hey, can I dissect you some time? How is it even possible for you to be so muscular with such a small frame. My dissection hands are tingling.”   
  
Sonia tried really hard to take that as a compliment too but she failed. Gundham bristled behind her like he was a porcupine showing his quills. She waved him off so he did not start anything.    
  
  


Medaka came back, but she still refused to talk to Kamukura. Even though he insisted that he was not the one who moved the body of Miyakonojou Oudo, and that he had only dug up the body in the first place to try to find an antidote to the poison that killed him. 

 

There were two deaths in two days. It seemed like the next time one of them fell asleep, another one of the random civilians they came across would be slaughtered in the streets and the body left as a piece of art for them to find. 

  
Not only that but the messages they were being sent over and over again from this week’s game master insisted that the killer was one of them. One of the twenty two who was participating in the game (down to nineteen now).    
  
What made it worse was. “Oh my god, is there anybody in this game who isn’t a serial killer?” Matsuda said, as the four of them gathered up, Mikan, Sonia, Medaka, Matsuda, the rest were with Kamukura in the other room. 

  
Matsuda did not want Kamukitty to get lonely.    
  
“Even that goody two shoes brat is a killer now.” Matsuda said, throwing salt in the wound on purpose. He looked at Medaka. “Maybe you got a taste for it.”   
  
Medaka flinched and averted her eyes. “Are you trying to be unpleasant?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Wow, I didn’t notice. I thought you were just naturally like that.”   
  
“Don’t suddenly develop a sense of humor.” Matsuda said. “Well whatever, my bet is on the serial killer nurse.”    
  
Mikan suddenly grabbed Matsuda by the shoulder. “I’m not a serial killer nurse. I r-really do want to help people.”    
  
“Right. You’re not even a real nurse. The serial-killer not-nurse.”   
  
“I… I can do most of the things a nurse does.”   
  
“I didn’t know they gave out talents as pity prizes. Did you cry in front of them until they gave you a title to make you feel less useless?”   
  
“Matsuda-kun.”   
“Matsuda!”    
  
Medaka and Sonia said at the same time. Matsuda’s face soured. “Oh, can you two stop pretending to care about Mikan? You guys are nice, but you aren’t anything more than nice. The second she becomes even slightly difficult to deal with you’re just gonna dump her on me again. At least I’m being honest.” 

  
“D-don’t talk about me like I’m not here! Even if I am the type of person so spineless and easy to step on I might as well be a doormat.”   
  
“You’re way too loud to be a doormat, don’t flatter yourself.”   
  
“I can’t even be a doormat!” Mikan said with a sharp whine.    
  
Sonia saw the red in Medaka’s eyes. She decided to drag the girl away from the room before she got angry again. Matsuda seemed to enjoy provoking other people a little too much. Maybe he was hoping to be hated, just like Tanaka, and that thought made Sonia a little sad. Truly.    
  
“It’s hard isn’t it?” Sonia asked her when she was alone.   
  
Medaka  puffed her cheeks up. She was seriously pouting. She was just like a little girl even now. “Nothing is hard for me. Everything’s way too easy. It’s boring.”    
  
“You know Tanaka-kun really loves me, but sometimes I wish he would hate me a little bit.” Sonia said, as she crossed her arms around her legs. There was a hole in the roof of the hospital the two of them were in. Sonia looked up like she was stargazing. When she was younger she stared up at the sky all alone and wished on a star for a prince to come save her.   
  
She got her prince. She got a boy who loved her so much he was willing to die for her. But she realized too late what she wanted wasn’t a prince that walked right out of a story, but rather a living, breathing human who she could rest her head against his chest and hear his heart beat just like hers.    
  
“No matter what I do to him he always forgives me. He’ll accept me no matter what I become, even if I stop being a princess, even if I fall into despair, but for me that acceptance is just a bit too heavy.”    
  
She and Gundham had never been friends. Maybe that was the problem. Perhaps it would be hard for someone like Gundham to believe, but she really did love him as early back as she could remember. She loved a boy who considered himself unlovable.    
  
“He thinks I’m pure. That I’m blameless, but you know Medaka-chan. He might be right. I’ve never killed someone. I’ve never gotten my own hands dirty. But that’s because…”    
  
She remembered that tower where her teacher trained her.   
The place where she was starved to death. The place where she studied without sleep by candle light, and she burned herself with the wax to keep her awake. She remembered the faceless teacher, and the faceless prisoner that had been brought in front of her.   
  
He was a threat to the country. He ordered her to kill the man in front of her. He put a knife in her hands. The life of the person in front of her was so fragile, like she was being asked to execute a rabbit.    
  
That thing, that thing, that thing. She had to kill that thing.    
If she killed him she would no longer be human, but she was never going to be allowed to be human. Not when she had to be a princess.    
  
The knife in her hands was far too heavy. Sonia finally raised it in the air. She brought it down, and then saw his dirty blood get all over her clean hands and she hated it. She hated being covered in someone else’s blood. She was the princess meant to stand above others, she would not lower herself to their level.    
  
Let the peasants kill themselves over a few pieces of bread while she ate cake.   
  
Sonia nevermind smiled.   
She smiled, and then tripped her teacher. He was so surprised that he fell to the ground face first. He needed to bow, hee was standing in front of his princess. She brought him down to his knees.    
  
“If you don’t bow to me next time I see you, I’ll cut your ham strings and you’ll never be able to stand again.” That little girl said, as she brought the knife to his neck. “You really thought you could order me around? You thought you could give commands to the royal bloodline? Are you so lazy you expect me to take care of everything for you.”   
  
Sonia threw the knife at his feet.   
  
“You kill him. Kill him for the sake of your princess.” 

 

That man looked truly happy in that person. Oh, that was what he had wanted. He wanted her to become a princess and pull at his strings. He wanted someone to give him orders. He had been so desperate for that.    
  
People wanted princesses to exist.    
Gundham wanted her to be the princess he fell in love with.    
  
“It’s a little bit lonely.” Sonia said, as she finished confiding in Medaka.    
  


  
“Enough with the princess pity party.” Matsuda said, as he returned to the room. He threw a medical text book at Medaka’s face. She caught it with her face. It was very graceful. “Hey, eat that text book for me. I need you to become a smarter doctor than me in five minutes so you can figure out what’s wrong with me.”    
  
“That’s not really how it works.”    
  
“Absorb the book through osmosis you amoeba.”   
  
“Fine, fine, you don’t need to yell.” Medaka said. Just like any kid she was ordered around pretty easily.    
  
  


🦔

 

He liked being underwater. He decided.    
He could sit at the bottom of a swimming pool and drown his thoughts out with the sounds.    
  
Matsuda pulled his white jacket off and threw it at Medaka’s face. “Here, put this on so you’ll look less like a dumbass.”   
  
“I’m smarter than you, you know.”    
  
“And yet, somehow you manage to still be a dumbass. You’re amazing. Talented. Flawless.”    
  
  


Medaka grumbled as she put the white jacket on. If Kumagawa’s eyes were like knives that cut you open and looked inside of you from the inside of your brain, then Medaka’s cuts were much sloppier. Medaka adjusted the pair of glasses that she probably just put on to look smarter. “I diagnose you with desperation disease.”   
  
“That’s not a real disease, try again dipshit.”    
  
“But it’s a life or death matter for you isn’t it? It’s pretty much terminal.”   
  
“Shut up, I’m supposed to be the funny and clever one.”

 

“You actually think you’re funny? That’s kind of sad.” 

 

“Yeah, my whole life’s a goddamn tragedy, wah, wah, wah. I’m over it.”   
  
“You’re so clearly not.”   
  
“But for the moment let’s pretend I am.”    
  
“Junko is… more like me.”    
  
“Jeez, no wonder I hate you both so goddamn much.”    
  
“It’s really hard to explain this when you keep interrupting.”   
  
“Jeez, I know right? Some people don’t know when to shut the fuck up,” Matsuda said quite obviously talking about himself.    
  
Medaka was just kind of being used to being the center of attention naturally. It was hard to navigate people when she actually had to try. But Matsuda was already looking at someone else. Another girl was at the center of his galaxy. You know it was recently discovered the center of most galaxies, including our own contained a supermassive black hole. Anyway. “Junko, Komaeda, me, we’re different. One person will never be enough for us. We’re focused on the whole world. It’s hard to notice one person when you’re looking at everyone.”   
  
Oh that was why. Zenkichi would never be enough for her.    
He was just one person.    
She made him feel that way.    
She made him feel like he had to be enough for her. That her love was something to be earned. That he had to compete with everybody else for it.    
  
  


“They’re changing the world because they can’t change themselves. Komaeda’s terminally ill and Junko is, well she’s lazy I guess…” Medaka said her eyes falling in disapproval, “But, you and Hinata are the opposite. You’re always trying to change yourselves so at least one person will accept you.” 

 

“That’s a pretty fucking flattering portrait you’re painting of yourself there. Hey, why don’t you try to relate to us lowly human beings when you get actual flaws instead of your boring job interview flaws-”    
  
“You can’t live on your own, can you?”   
  
Matsuda had nothing to say.   
Matsuda had nothing to say.   
Matsuda had nothing to say.    
  
“But, Junko can. That’s what you’re scared of.” 

  
I wasn’t the one.   
I wasn’t the one who broke out promise, Junko.    
  
Blood fell into the water. Slowly, everything around him was dyed red. He watched the color of blood separate into the water, into many different shades of red spilling forth, like a sudden explosion of red flowers.    
  
Junko stole his white jacket. She stole his lab coat and stood in front of him. She wore nothing but her black underwear and his white lab coat. She didn’t look naked. No matter how revealing her clothing, Junko never revealed herself. He couldn’t see her. She was his only childhood friend but he couldn’t see her. He was so lonely. She might as well have been his imaginary friend. It was all fake.    
  
“Why…?” 

 

Matsuda asked, his voice was like that of a small child. Suddenly, he was nine years old again, and his mother had just died, and the only person he could talk to was the only girl who just like him had no other friends.    
  
“Why did you lie to me…? I didn’t want to have some happy go lucky childhood friend, I wanted to be your friend.”    
  
“Well, uh…” Junko looked distracted. “Kids like candy, right?”   
  
“What?”   
  
“I’m saying you were a sucker.” Junko was sitting on the edge of a rooftop. He had made her take off her clothes because when he found her, she was soaked all the way through with blood. At first he was scared because he thought it was hers. He was relieved when he found out it was someone else’s. He was terrible. She was terrible. Junko and him always met on the rooftop, it was their secret spot. His childhood. His only confidant in the world. The one person he thought would never lie to him, was covered in someone else’s blood. “You were just so desperate, Yasuke-kun. You can’t blame me for taking advantage of you.”   
  
“Oh yes, I fucking can.” 

 

“You wanted to be lied to.” 

 

“No, I didn’t. God. What are you, five? You’ve literally never taking responsibility for a single thing in your life. This is just like when you stole the cookie from the cookie jar and blamed it on me.”   
  
“Yasuke-kun, you saw me murder someone. I think this is a little different from when we were kids.”   
  
“No, fuck you. It’s the exact same thing.”    
  
“The reality is, kids like you get abandoned all the time. They don’t get the help they need. What you wanted to believe was a fairytale where your childhood friend came and saved you.” Junko said, her eyes. Her eyes. Her eyes were red. How did he not notice? He didn’t notice the eye color of his closest friend. They were like blood drops falling into clear water, staining it. “How can you blame me for playing the person you so desperately wanted me to be?”   
  
“I…”   
  
He wanted to be friends with her. He wanted her. Not a lie, not a substitute. If she was just playing a role she could be anybody’s friend. She was not his friend.

 

“Well. It’s like you said, I’m not really your childhood friend. So it shouldn’t matter if I do this-” Junko suddenly leaned back.    
  
As long as she had known her she had always been standing on the edge of a rooftop. She was standing on the other side of the line. That was why no matter how important of a person she was, it was difficult to get close to her. She drew a line with the heel of her boot, and he could not step over it. Even if he kissed her, the line would stop just short of her lips.    
  
She was so desperate to fall. She had been waiting her entire life to fall and scatter.

 

He rushed forward suddenly, and took her hand. He pulled her to his side of the line. There was surprise in her eyes, as she fell forward on top of him. 

  
Every tilts and tilts.    
The despicable surface of the water and the sky are indistinguishable from one another.   
And they are both colored a dark red.    
She was a person entirely different than the one he thought he knew.   
And yet.   
Since they were kids.    
She did not change a bit, even now.    
She was frozen.   
From the first day he met her, she was frozen, and he became frozen too.    
And together they were both frozen in a single moment of time.    
He was not able to fly with her.   
He could only fall. All he wanted was to be by her side, but all he could do was fall.   
All he could do was reach the bottom.   
Junko’s eyes.   
The sky was contained in her eyes.   
The sky was red. He was going to dye the sky red with the blood he would spill so please, please don’t forget him.    
  
_ My sky. My blood. My everything.  _

  
Enoshima Junko fell on top of him. For a moment her eyes looked surprised. She did not expect him to take her hand. Then her eyes became as still and uncaring as the sky above them. “You like me even like this, don’t you?” 

  
“No. Shut up. I hate you.”    
  
“You have bad taste, Yasuke-chan.”    
  
Her eyes. Her expression. They were incredibly sincere in that moment. Matsuda wondered so many times. Did she regret breaking him? She knew what she was doing all along, but did she ever hesitate once? 

 

He knew those questions would never be answered but he could not stop them from spilling forth like blood from a gaping wound. Then suddenly he was dragged back to reality, and he remembered it was not Junko he was talking to, but Medaka in the labcoat.    
  


  
  
  


  
“You guys remake yourselves over and over again to be loved, but what you really want is someone to accept you flaws and all. You say you want to be useful, but you want someone to tell you it’s okay to be useless.” Medaka said, looking down. “And everybody expects me to be perfect. It’s not fair. You guys get to keep doing whatever you want. You want to be loved for the flaws you’re too lazy to correct and I have to be perfect.”    
  
“What are you a goddamn kid?” Matsuda said, interrupting her. “Wah, wah, everyone expects me to be perfect. It’s so hard, no one understands me.”   
  
Matsuda slowly raised his eyes, and stared into those red eyes.   
Drops of blood in the water.    
  
“You’re so smart but you can’t realize, everybody else feels misunderstood too. Everybody else deals with that feeling. They all fall short of the expectations other people have on them. It’s just you can’t deal with it.” Matsuda said. “You’re such a lazy-ass perfectionist.” 

  
Behind her, Junko Enoshima was laughing.   
Medaka could hear her, that small child clutching a stuffed bear was laughing at her.    
  
“Sssssh, Matsuda-kun, aren’t you getting bored of this?”   
  
“Huh?” 

 

Mikan’s eyes.    
Black.   
Black.    
Black.   
And white.    
The same eyes as the woman he loved.    
  
“Why don’t you listen to yourself when you speak? You just say the same things over and over again.”   
  
“Because I hate the sound of my own voice, obviously. You’d have to be an idiot to listen to someone like me.”    
  
“All this stuff about being useful, and useless. It’s idiotic. Even an idiot like me knows that.” Mikan said looking up to the television screen. On the screen, Junko and Kumagawa were sitting side by side. There was no distance between them. As if the veins in their body were connected to each other and they were sharing the same beating heart.    
  
“It’s true, junko was the type who only cared about how she could use people but she’s different now. She was the kind of person who wouldn’t be happy even if everyone loved her. But, she found one person she was happy with. Or maybe she was unhappy with. It just wasn’t you.” 

  
He already knew that.   
He knew there was somebody he loved with all his heart. If it had been a lie that he loved, if it had just been a happy dream, it would have hurt less. He really loved her, and because of that his heart was shattered.    
  
“But that’s a good thing isn’t it? If there’s a chance for Junko to change then doesn’t that mean you can change too?”    
  
Mikan asked him.   
And Matsuda realized.   
Why he was so scared that there was a crack in his skull.   
He did not want to change. 

Nobody had accepted him for who he was yet, if he changed than nobody would love that little kid who didn’t have a mother.    
  



	48. Eve

Mikan closed her eyes because she did not want to see.  
She put her hands over her ears because she did not want to hear.  
She bit her tongue because she did not want to speak.  
  
If she could somehow shut out all pain then she might be happy. She needed to stop being in the same room as Matsuda-kun. She needed to stop being dissected by those eyes. He was just too sharp and Mikan was in pieces already.  
  
What’s going on?  
What’s happening to me?  
  
Someone was singing. Covered in warmth she pricked her ears to the singing voice. She was dozing off on someone’s chest. Another level of softness and warmth. A hug embracing her very soul.  
  
There was only one person who would hold her like this. She was in the arms of the one who embraced her. Something painful had happened. She could smell blood. She didn’t remember anything besides that.  
  
The girl moved her lips. She was always saying weird things that Mikan didn’t understand.. Even now. She saw her lips move, but no voice reached her ears, like they were separated by a thick wall of glass. 

The singing voice is still on-going.  
Swaying like a wave.  
Swiftly flowing like a clear stream.  
  
Before Mikan realized it, the view around her changed into a purplish red field of flowers. The girl who hugged her kept on singing while the both of them fell back, and lay together among the grass and flower stems. Petals get blown off, stems are shaken by the breeze. The whole garden trembled, but Mikan was completely still in her arms.  
  
Don’t be scared. It’s not scary. It’s fine. You’re okay.  
There is surely someone out there who loves you.  
There is someone who will hold you like this.   
  
That girl with her long nails like a fine comb, was able to stroke Mikan’s hair again and again without getting stuck in the tangles. The first time her hair has ever been touched without being violently pulled.  
  
A warm drop fell on her cheek. That girl was crying.  
Why was she crying?  
Mikan forgot to ask.  
  
Flowers bloomed at her feet. This room became a garden because she was in it. In the garden there was just them, and there was love. There were no tears. This was just morning dew falling off of the flowers. A sun shower. The light is vague, and idyllic, and all the lines that made up the shapes of their forms blurred,  but Mikan is warmth, and she is gently caressed. 

The infirmary was her Eden. Flower filled days. Days that would only become a painful memory in her heart later when she tried to recall what that happiness was like. After all, Eden did not allow her to stay for too long. Those carrying sin always end up getting expelled.  
  
 _Here I’ll meet that person again._  
  
She remembered making her way to the infirmary. There was a fresh set of bandages on her left hand, Mikan had inflicted those wounds on herself hoping that they would be kissed. She had stopped going to class a long time ago. Every day she cut class to wait in the infirmary. 

_I've met the person who needs me._

She finally had peaceful days. She finally had something, no someone to hold onto. She thought if she could just have that one person all the pain in life would be worth it.   
  
Some days Mikan waited all day for her to show up. Only to wait alone in an empty room. She tried not to think about those days. The times when Enoshima was around were so warm, Mikan could almost forget about the cold that lingered when she was gone.  
  
As Mikan waited suddenly the door slammed open. Enoshima liked to make an entrance. Showing off. Charming people. She seemed to crave that and only that, and seemed to aim for that and only that,  
  
“Hiya, Tsumiki-senpai!” A tan sweater sleeves rolled all the way up.Her skirt so tight Mikan could see the lines of her thighs through it. “Am I late? Am I late? Am I late?”  
  
“Umm, yeah-”  
  
“Whatever! I’m fashionably late! What do you do when I’m not around anyway.”  
  
“I umm, waited for you.”  
  
“Wow, supes exciting life you got there senpai. You must be sooo popular. I hate to ruin your fun, buuuuut..."

She was framed there perfectly in the doorway like a piece of art. Not a girl, but art. Mikan was shaken. Down to her bones, the ones covered in scars underneath her bandages, she shook. Then, Enoshima pulled somebody else in the doorway. It was like a clumsy artist had spilled black ink all over the canvas.  
  
“Matsuda-kun! Over here! Over here! Good boy.”  
  
“I’m not your damn dog.”  
  
“Dogs are happy when you praise them, but you’re not happy no matter what.” Enoshima said, before wrapping her elbow around his dangling arm and pulling him into frame with her. “Guess who I’m going to introduce you to? A) Tsumiki-senpai. B) Enoshima Junko. C) Enoshima Junko’s breasts.”  
  
“Geez, I told you I don’t care.”  
  
“Wrong! Totally wrong! You’ve lost the gyaru gal game show. You get the death penalty.”  
  
“Stop flirting and hurry up and kill me already. Anything’s better than spending five more minutes with you."   
  
“See? See the girl with the apron? Turn over here!”  
  
“Don’t wanna.”  
  
He looked like he was resisting her, but as he turned his head away he kept glancing back at Junko. As if he was afraid if he looked away for too long she might not be there anymore. Her claws were already that deep, digging into his shirt.  
  
“Tsumiki-senpai this man is the Ultimate Neurologist Matsuda Yasuke.”  
  
Let go of him. Let go of him. Let go of him.  
Junko did not let go.  
She was holding onto Matsuda tighter than she had ever held Mikan.  
All of the cuts that Junko left on her in comparison were just shallow wounds.  
  
“He’s my darling! We call each other pet names and everything!”   
  
"Go to hell, attention whore."   
  
"I'll see you there, unwanted child." 

“Huh…?” 

Her peaceful days.  
They fell apart, and fell down around her with a loud sound.  
  
That day, Mikan redid the bandaging around her freshly wounded hand all by herself. She stared at the bandaged up hand, even in the classes she reluctantly attended. Words in her head like _Kamukura project_ were swirling around. _  
__  
__He tried to explain it to me but I didn’t really understand any of it. All those nerd word just sort of fell out of my brain, oops!_ Mikan’s fingers scratched the desk. _I’m in way over my head her. I don’t know like… anything! Like...ever! But especially right now._  
  
Junko’s voice pleaded with her as she insisted she had no idea what was going on with the Kamukura project, but now that she was involved she was in trouble. Mikan only half listened, until she heard those words.

_Pretty, pretty, pretty, please, I need you Tsumiki-senpai._

Chiaki looked up from the game she was playing in the middle of the class. “Is something wrong, Tsumiki-san?”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“Why are you so quiet? You’re usually louder. It’s like you’re fading into the background right now.”  
  
“Don’t make it seem like the only reason you guys remember me is because I’m loud and annoying!” 

“Oh… that was insensitive, probably…” Chiaki said, in her usual sleepy voice. “If you want to talk about something, I’m always here…”  
  
Chiaki probably thought she was being kind.  
But she was simply being nice.  
Those were words anyone could say.  
So halfhearted.  
She came to Hope’s Peak, and made friends for the first time. She thought all of the girls in class were so nice to her. She thought that was what happiness was like, but it was all too fragile. The moment she tried to talk about what she was really feeling, all the girls pulled away.  
  
One of the girls in their friend group died and everyone carried on like normal. That was when Mikan realized that she did not have a single individual friend among this group. No one ever wanted to speak with her alone. She was just fitting in. If she died, they would all forget about her.  
  
That’s why she found the place. Not the place where she was _good enough,_ but the place where she was _needed._ Enoshima looked at her. She listened to her. She talked to her. She needed even a weakling like her. She smiled at her like it was nothing. Like it was easy to smile. She took her in on one of her whims, like she was some pretty little thing she had picked off a shelf. Enoshima called her by name and invited her in, she whispered in her ear.  
  
It was only a moment, but Mikan could cling onto one moment forever. She wanted to cling to one person forever.  
  
But now her eden was lost.  
SHe was going to cooperate with Matsuda from now on.When she made it to the infimary again later that day, she saw Matsuda’s back.. He was so closed off. Before she could even speak up.  
  
“Uh, um… what business do you-”  
  
“You're getting in the way."   
  
He cut her off.  
  
Enoshima told her everything about him in her introduction. She sounded like she was gushing. Mikan never saw Enoshima’s face, even under all that makeup it turned red. She didn’t know Enoshima’s face could have so much color, until she saw her looking at him.  
  
They were in the same year, but Matsuda was already a doctor. He was a teen prodigy who completed medical school and residency early. Mikan was not even officially certified as a nurse, she was a helper at best. He had already done so more than her in the same time.  
  
“E...excuse me.” She raised her voice behind him as she curled up her fingers at her chest. “I don’t like you playing in the infirmary…”  
  
He didn’t look at her. He wasn’t looking at her. He trampled over flowers, and pulled them out at the roots as he was digging around. He finally pulled out a volume of manga with a magical girl on the cover.  
  
“That brat… She must have left it here when she was skipping class. Stealing other people’s things is bad, I’m going to punish her next time I see her.”  
  
He suddenly tuned around. Those eyes, they were looking at the inside of her skull. “Did somebody put you in charge here?”  
  
“Umm… The person who’s supposed to be here just goes home early, and leaves all the work for me because I’m talented…”  
  
“I see. You’re not accredited. You shouldn’t be working unsupervised. From now on, I’m in charge of you. You’ll report to the neuroscience lab, try not to kill my patients-”  
  
“Pl...please wait! Matsuda-san.”  
  
“Huh?” 

Mikan had no idea what she was going to say to him. She called him back without thinking. “Uh, ah, well. Sorry for calling you. Um, I have a question so…”  
  
“What? Spill it out? I don’t know how you’re going to handle working with patients when you can’t make it through one conversation.”  
  
“Did, Enoshima-san tell you about me? Has she said anything about me?”  
  
“Beats me. Haven’t heard a thing.”  
  
There was no garden. There was no flowers. There was just a lonely girl’s delusion. 

“Right. Sorry for giving you a weird question. Then, everything’s fine. Thanks.”  
  
She wanted to run away.  
She didn’t want to be seen.  
She didn’t want to be heard.  
She didn’t want to say anything.  
She wanted to run back to the garden free of sin.  
  


“You…” He wielded those eyes like scalpels. “Are you always this annoying?”  
  
“Ah, I’m sorry.”  
  
“I just wanted to check the infirmary, but there’s nothing useful here.” He said, eyes cutting into Mikan.. Slicing her open. Girl dissection. Mikan was itching from the shame inside of her, hidden underneath her skin. She wanted to itch until her bandages came loose. “Are you having fun playing house here?”  
  
“I just umm… I just look at kids with headaches. I don’t do anything that matters.”  
  
“The medical instruments in this room are just toys. Why did the academy accept a little girl playing nurse?”  
  
“I umm... I dunno.”  
  
“Then if you don’t know you’re not responsible. Right?”  
  
She felt sick. She felt sick. She felt sick.  
No, she was the sickening one.

“You think you won’t get criticized if you play the victim? I’m just a big meanie yelling at you? If it were me I would have already gotten certified as a nurse, and used my research money to upgrade this room into a place that can actually take care of patients. If you try to treat anyone here you’ll kill them with your incompetence. Fine. Don’t do anything. I’ll fix this for you. Just listen to what I say from now on.”  
  
Mikan didn’t think.  
She was so stupid, because she didn’t think at all.  
He said he didn’t know about her relationship with Enoshima.  
Enoshima never said anything about her.  
Like she was a stranger.  
Like she had forgotten.

 

🧸  
  
“You bullied Mikan until she passed out. I’ll kill you.”  
  
“Either kill me already, or shut up. Enough goddamn flirting.”  
  
When Mikan opened her eyes again her head was in Emukae’s lap. Emukae and Matsuda were bickering, and Sonia and Medaka left. Mikan had not really passed out, she had just slipped away from her body for a few minutes. She wanted to be somewhere else. She wanted to be happy.  
  
But she had no idea what happiness looked like, even in her dreams. 

“I thought you were too smart to fall for her fake crying.”  
  
“Nope, my brains are rotten.”  Emukae said, placing a finger gun at her ear.   
  
“You talk way too much for a corpse. Shut up and let me autopsy you already.”  
  
“Sure. Sounds sexy. My cold naked body, underneath a sheet, waiting for Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“Nevermind. I’m not touching that.”  
  
“It’s not nice to refer to somebody as _that._ How am I supposed to know my diagnosis is you won’t be my doctor, Matsuda-kun?”  
  
“You're a braindead bitch. There.” Matsuda snipped at her.   
  
People always talked like she wasn’t in the room. If she was too quiet she faded away, if she was too loud she got on everybody’s nerves. She was the exact opposite of her mother, who controlled every room she walked into. Who immediately became the center. Maybe if she had been born more like her mother, more capable of reading a room, her mother would have found less things to hate about her.  
  
She was going to tell them her real feelings now. From the bottom of her heart. “Pay attention to me!” No wait, her feelings were more complex than that. She wasn’t that shallow.  
  
“Why don’t you actually get some people skills first? Make it through one normal conversation psycho nurse, just one.” Matsuda said.   
  
Mikan shook.  
  
“See, she’s shaking already.” Matsuda was pointing at her. It was very unfriendly and rude.   
  
“What are people skills? How do you know what they are? You’re talking to the girl who stabbed you like it’s normal…” Emukae said, stepping in front of her. Mikan was either, someone to be insulted, or someone to be defended. Where was she in this moment?  
  
“This is not a conversation. You won’t shut up. And I’m doing my best to ignore you.”  
  
“Hey, hey, Matsuda-kun.” Emukae pestered him.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you think it feels good?” Emukae asked.   
  
“Do I think what feels good?” Matsuda repeated.   
  
“When Kumagawa fucks your ex-girlfriend.”  
  
Matsuda choked and swallowed the cigarette that he had been trying to light in his mouth. He looked like he was about to die. “You…”  
  
“I didn’t do anything!” Mikan yelped. She thought he was mad at her.   
  
“Yeah, you never do anything. That’s the problem.”  Matsuda grumbled.   
  
“You wouldn’t be this mean to Komaeda-san.” Emukae said as she gripped the blade of her knife directly with her hand again. “And MIkan’s not the most useless person here, as long as Hinata-san’s still here. Why do you pretend to be heartbroken over Enoshima when you’re so clearly into them?”

“That’s different. They’re patients. She’s supposed to at least pretend to be a medical professional. She can’t even play house right.” Matsuda said.  
  
“Oh, so then she’s just like you.” Emukae swayed her head back and forth like it was completely empty.  
  
Mikan was jealous.  
Jealous of that emptiness.  
Emukae was just like her. So wounded. So damaged. Always bleeding from wounds that never healed. She was defective, but she was still a person. That’s what Mikan was failing at. Nobody looked at her like she was a person in this moment. Emukae could always speak up, and Mikan always stayed quiet.

She was not even person. She was just a body full of scars.

She wanted to be a scarecrow stuffed with straw too, just blowing in the wind.   
Then suddenly the scarecrow came to life and moved all on its own.   
  
Emukae spun the knife around in her hand, and suddenly cut open Mikan’s shirt. She lifted up her bra, just enough with the dull end of her knife so that Matsuda could see the scar that was just underneath her breast.   
  
“She has all the same scars as you, too. You’re both so cute.” Emukae said, her voice cooing. Eyes wide the way someone would look at a puppy. 

“I… I’m going to check on Hinata-san," Mikan made an excuse.   
  
She tried to run away as quickly as possible.  
  
“Don’t kill him,” Matsuda called after her. 

Kamukura slept.  
Hinata dreamed.  
  
His father took him to see baseball matches when he was young. That was when Hinata noticed, that there were so many people besides him. They were all crammed into Tokyo Stadium, but even that many people was a small fraction of the population.  
  
Every single person was looking at the baseball players. 

In high school he joined the baseball team for the first time. When he signed up, the coach laughed at him and said that he looked like one of the kids who joined to get popular with girls and then quit after a month. Hinata showed him, he lasted two months.  
  
He spent his entire first year of high school expecting to be scouted by Hope’s Peak. On the last day of that year Kizakura appeared before him, and then walked straight past Hajime to go talk to another one of his classmates.

Hinata joined baseball, but quit when he realized most players would sit on the bench for most of the first year. Especially a newcomer like him. Everybody told him he could do whatever he tried to do. Nobody told him trying meant failing again and again.  
  
Hinata finally got what he wanted. He was well known among his classmates finally. They knew him as someone who joined a club and then quit in less than two weeks, he had already hit thirteen of the school clubs in that way. Everybody knew his name as a joke.  
  
At the end of the year he had gained nothing, except a sense of regret. He should have stayed with baseball then at least he would have been a little better. Funny, he felt like he spent all of his time trying, and yet when he looked back it was like he wasted a whole year doing nothing.  
  
He should have held onto that bat.  
  
“Where… am I?”  
  
When Hinata looked down there was a bat in his hands. The pitcher was winding up in front of him, but the man had no face, only a plush bear head with a half smile.  
  
“A bat? Why? I can’t play baseball…”  
  
Hinata’s body moved on its own. He was like a puppet without strings. He swung, and heard the bat crack. The ball flew out of sight.  
  
Hinata felt no satisfaction at all.  
He was not the one who had swung the bat.  
He looked at his shaking hands.

 _Why can I play it!?_  
  
In his dream he was an expert poker player. In his dream, trophies for every single sports team and record in his high school were lined up in front of him. In his dream he had perfect caligraphy. In his dream he could make a fortune with day trading. 

One after another, the people with bears for heads walked up and handed him something. 

He shot a gun.  
He swung a sword.  
He bandaged up someone’s wounds.  
He sung.  
He took a photo.  
He commanded his yakuza grunts to kill a man.  
He tamed a tiger with his bare hands.  
He encouraged his sports team to go to the playoffs.  
His gymnatsics routine was a perfect ten out of ten.  
He ruled a country as its king.  
He cooked a meal.  
He could become anybody he wanted to be.  
He won every single time he played a game.  
He saw everything like it was a machine waiting to be taken apart.  
He screamed and someone called it music.  
  
When he rolled the dice he always got the result he wanted.

 _Why can I do anything?_  
  
He had no idea who he was anymore. He was like the white background he was standing in front of, completely undefined. Talents and talents kept falling from the sky, and piling up in the blank space that he called his head.  
  
 _I don’t. I don’t know who I am anymore._ _  
__  
_These were not his talents. He was being sewn together from organs stolen from the corpses of other people. Hinata was sinking inside of his own head. Black ink filled the white world like water.  
  
Hinata sat on the surface of that water. He looked down, but he did not recognize the boy who was looking back at him. 

 _Just because I didn’t have any talent._ _  
__Why did I have to disappear?_  
  
Kamukura awoke with a start. Hinata was dreaming. No, Hinata could not be dreaming because he was Hinata. Those were his dreams. He moved his fingers around, to be sure he was the one manipulating the complex motions of those digits.  
  
He slowly turned his head around to see, Mikan was there watching him. “Get out…”  
  
“I-if you’re having trouble I can recommend.”  
  
“I’m the ultimate nurse I already know everything you’re going to say.”  
  
Mikan only wanted a helpless child to cling to her. The Kamukura she met when he had no self to wrap himself around, so he hugged her instead.  
  
“I know…” Mikan said speaking up. Usually, Mikan was such a coward even if she was angry, or sad, she backed down at the slightest confrontation. There was something different about her. “I know you’re afraid of looking useless in front of everybody.”  
  
That was why no matter how many times Kamukura had flashbacks of the surgery.  
No matter how much his head ached.  
No matter how much he felt fingers pulling at the stitches on his skull like they were trying to pry his head open again he had to pretend like nothing happened.  
He kept his face still at all times.  
  
“But, I’m the most useless person on earth! I’m always going to be the most pathetic person in the class! I make Komaeda look good by comparison. So…”  
  
Mikan tried to be strong, but she had no strength. All she could be was weak. Weak like that boy she met.  
  
“So it doesn’t matter if you look weak in front of me. You don’t have to feel bad about crying with me. You can just go _oh, Mikan’s a loser who cares what she thinks._ I can’t even tell my friends that you were crying because I don’t have any friends.”  
  
“What a boring speech.”  
  
Mikan grabbed him and hugged him close to her chest.  
Kamukura could no longer remember his mother, or what it felt like to be held by her.  
  
“You’re all so boring. Why do I keep… putting up with you…” Kamukura muttered as he finally gave in and leaned against her. 

 

🧸  
  


Ever since she had been forced to work with Matsuda, Mikan had been thinking in the back of her head all the accidental ways she could get rid of him.  
  
One day she thought she saw Enoshima waiting for her in her office.  
But instead, there was another girl.   
A girl with red hair and red eyes.  
Before Mikan could ask who she was, that girl took a step back and fell out the window.  
A clumsy, useless girl.  
  
“I shouldn’t have tried looking out that window."   
  
“Umm… are you okay?”  
  
Mikan dragged her into the infirmary. Even though Matsuda told her she was no longer allowed to treat people without him supervising. The girl scratched the bandage on the the bridge of her nose.  
  
“Otonashi Ryoko. Was it?”  
  
"What a weird name. Sounds like the name of a person I hate."  
  
"That's your name."   
  
“I guess so. I forget a lot.” Almost as if on cue. “Huh? Why am I here? Who are you?”  
  
They had had this conversation three times already. Ryoko would introduce herself and immediately forget.  
  
“Otonashi-san, you fell from the tree.”  
  
“Right. I just wrote it in my notebook. Oh no, maybe I forgot how to read!” She hid behind her notebook. “I’m sorry, I really have no memory.”  
  
All she had done this entire time was apologize over and over again. Mikan had no idea how to deal with someone who apologized so much. It was like talking in a mirror and hearing the echo of her own voice. _This girl is really useless._

“I forget everyone but Matsuda-kun. That’s why I’ve been looking for him.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun? You mean Matsuda, Yasuke?” 

“Yes! That’s right! You know him? Tell me all about him. I love him. There are a hundred reasons I love him. Let me name Matsuda-kun’s one hundred best qualities. Oh no, I forgot.”  
  
Matsuda was dating Enoshima.  
Maybe, this girl did not know about the two of them being a couple.  
Maybe she was Enoshima’s rival.  
Maybe she could break them up.  
  
“I'm sorry but, that guy already has someone he likes."   
  
“So what?” 

Mikan remembered the way her heart stopped when she saw Junko and Matsuda together. If Junko had just asked her, she would have given the knives and told Junko where to stab her happily.  
  
Ryoko laughed it all away like it was nothing. It had nothing to do with her. Other people’s feelings, her own worries, they were all just things she had forgotten about in a few seconds.  
It was like there was nothing at all inside that girl. Mikan was almost jealous.  
  
“Even if I’m not his lover, we’re still in a relationship as doctor and patient. Matsuda-kun. Being beside matsuda-kun makes me happy.. Since he’s everything to me. All I need is to be connected to him in some way, even if it's from wounds. I wouldn't mind getting covered up in little cuts from his knife, hehehehehe."   
  
“Well, that’s nice, but Matsuda-kun probably doesn’t like you.”  
  
“Yep! But if those are his real feelings that's fine. If he were just nice to me out of sympathy that'd be a lie right, and I'd hate him.”  
  
But those were the only feelings Mikan understood.  
Those were the only feelings she could connect with.  
That’s all anyone ever felt about the crying victim.  
Pity was the drug she self-medicated with.   
  
“Otonashi-san, why do you always think of him?”  
  
“Why? Why indeed?” If this girl’s memories were intact she would probably have a bad personality. That’s what Mikan got the sense of. “I guess it’s because of love.’  
  
“I believe in Matsuda-kun.”  
“I want to be needed by Matsuda-kun.”  
“I have to meet Matsuda-kun.” 

“Aren’t you sad?”  
  
“It’s not despair if it’s love.”  
  
She repeated those words again and again. Like she was trying to carve it into her own skin so she would not forget. Otonashi forgot that conversation soon afterwards, but Mikan remembered. The straightforwardness of that girl who reminded her of Enoshima, the useless girl who reminded her of herself.  
  
Enoshima stopped coming to the infirmary. A month later, Yasuke dropped out of the school and Mikan thought she would finally have her back.  
  
Enoshima-san.  
Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san. Enoshima-san.

 _I want to believe in Enoshima-san._ _  
__I want to be needed by ENoshima-san._ _  
__I have to meet Enoshima-san._ _  
__  
__She’s been waiting for me all this time. She was waiting for me at the usual place. I’m sorry for making you wait. I’m going to meet you for sure. Enoshima-san I almost lost my precous person. Enoshima-san probably couldn’t stand being stolen away from me._  
  
“Wait for me. I’ll always be by your side.” 

 

 _I need you and you need me._ _  
__That’s love._

 

When Mikan finally found her. Junko sat in the 78th classroom all alone. She was ecstatic. MIkan had never seen her smile like that when the two of them were alone. She could never make Enoshima smile that way.  
  
At that moment as Enoshima stared at the window.  
Mikan thought.  
 _She doesn’t need the current me._  
  
Mikan fell in.  
Despair. Love.  
She tried to remember Otonashi’s words. _It’s not despair if it’s love._ _  
__  
_Matsuda was just killed by her. Mikan was his replacement. How could he say she was just playing house. She was different from before Matsuda-san. She had studied as many medical text books as possible.  
  
If only she were more like him.   
There was a corpse in her infirmary room, one day before the school was going to blow up. Mikan stared at it as if she did not see it. Then acted surprised like she just noticed. There were several scalpels shoved into its face.  
  
“This infirmary, Enoshima and I only made it dirty…”  
  
No, why was she thinking about that?  
  
“I have to change and become stronger. I have to come up with a plan to be needed by Enoshima-san after this. I have to replace him.”  
  
“Oooh! Are you monologuing to yourself, Tsumiki-senpai? Let me in on the drama. Dish, girl!”  
  
Junko suddenly appeared in the frame of the doorway, painted in red.  
  
“E-eno-shima-san. Finally… you came.”  
  
“I didn’t come for you. God, you think someone with no self esteem at all would learn to be a little less self important.”  
  
“I was waiting for you!” Mikan said as she tried to take a step forward and fell in front of Junko. She was being crushed by the weight of her feelings. She reached forward to take hold of Enoshima’s thighs in both hands, and slid her hands up. “I’ve been studying. I studied a lot about neurology. I did a lot of research to be like Matsuda-san…”  
  
“Nerd.”  
  
“Um, I have a request. Pl.. please. Let me stay by your side. He's smarter, and more talented, but I would do anything. I'd kill everyone and myself if you asked me too."  
  
“Awe, you would die for me?”  
  
Enoshima Junko.  
Cupped her face.  
Then leaned in like she was going in for a kiss.  
  
“Then, die.”  
  
A scalpel slid under her breast and cut straight through her. Mikan could feel the blood draining from her heart, the moment the knife was removed. Each heart beat only made the life drain from her faster.  
  
Drip. Drip. Drip.  
  
Like rain, Tsumiki fell.   
Blood fell slowly out of her like her wound was crying. 

 _Do you want someone else to love you?_  
Her mother asked her.  
 _What should they love?_ _  
_Her mother repeated those words.  
 _What’s so lovable about you?_  
Answer me.  
She couldn’t.  
She didn’t know the answer mother.  
  


Mikan. Mikan. Mikan.  
Felt no pain.  
She felt a small sadness.  
Her mother. Her mother. Her mother  
Did not raise her.  
She did not raise such an ugly child.  
  
“Eh…? Oops, I tripped and Tsumiki-senpai fell on my knife! I’m such a clutz! Whatever will I do! Well, it’s no big deal. The rest of the Ulaimte Despairs aren’t this needy sooo…”  
  
Junko said as she casually walked out of the room.  
Gentle abuse repeated over and over again.  
She wanted Junko to call out to her gently and hit her once more.  
Junko didn’t come back.  
  
And then she died.  
But she didn’t die.  
When she opened her eyes again, she saw someone’s back. A boy in a black gakuran uniform buttoned up all the way to the collar.  
  
In the present moment.  
Mikan eavesdropped on a conversation between Matsuda and Emukae. Those two really got along for people who were trying to kill each other. It was a miracle of the power of friendship! 

“You see the difference between you and Kumagawa-”  
  
“I can read," Matsuda immediately answered.   
  
“You choose who to save. You save the people you like," Emukae said. "Even if you're decent deep down, you're choosy with who you show that decency too."   
  
“That can’t possibly be true, because as stated before I hate everyone.”  
  
“Say you hate Komaeda. Come on say it.”  
  
“But that might hurt his feelings...." Matsuda suddenly became a shy guy. 

“Oh no, you’d never say something that would hurt someone’s feelings. You’re far too nice for that.” Emukae said, rolling her eyes. She should be careful, they might roll out of her skull. “You look at Mikan, you feel bad, but you can’t take that step.”  
  
“Maybe I’m doing her a favor by staying out of her life. Have you seen my life recently?”  Matsuda just gestured around the abandoned hospital. Yeah, she got the point. 

“Kumagawa wouldn’t even hesitate. He steps over the line like he never saw a line in the first place.”  
  
“Yeah, and then he trips like an idiot and falls flat on his face? Are you saying I should be stupider? Okay, let me bang my head on the wall a few times to readjust my IQ.”  
  
“So you’re saying I should do what Kumagawa does and make everything worse for everyone involved, because I’m too needy to think maybe people would be better off they hadn’t met me.”  Matsuda pinched the bridge of his nose to relieve his headache. He wanted to slice his own skull open and take a look sometime, but Kamukura wouldn’t let him.  
  
“You should stay away from Mikan.” Matsuda finally said.   
  
“Eh, shouldn’t she be scared of me?” Emukae made a scary face, like she was trying to make herself look bigger.   
  
“You’re just pretending to be scary. You’re all bark. Like one of those annoying yappy dogs. Psycho nurse can be genuinely dangerous, and not just to the patients she kills with her incompetence.”  
  
“That’s fine then.”  
  
Emukae smiled.  
Mikan wanted to ask her.  
If that was Emukae’s real smile, or if she was just imitating Kumagawa again.  
She hoped it was really Emukae smiling at her.  
  
“That’s fine. If Mikan betrays me. If all we do is hurt each other. If I regret ever meeting her. That’s fine. I want to meet Mikan. I want to get close to Mikan. I’m not scared.”  
  
Emukae said.  
  
“This is the one point of pride we losers have over the talented. We don’t run away from love, or loss.”  
  
Mikan smiled.  
She was ready to leave.  
She wanted to run away from the garden with Lilith.  
Eve bit the apple.  
She had be thrown out of the garden.

To go to the place where she was wanted. 


	49. Lilith

The garden burned.    
  
Where there was once green, orange, yellow, and blood red flowers bloomed in an explosion. Fire was hungry. It crawled around on its belly like a snake and completely flattened the flowers and razed the earth it crawled over.    
  
The garden once embraced her.    
The flowers shed teards for her in the form of dewdrops. The wings of insects kissed her body to comfort her. The leaves tickled her to try to get her to laugh. The vines grew around her, wrapping around every part of her body. 

 

The fire embraced her.    
The touch melted her skin, she felt her skin dripping off of her bone, and the solid white bones underneath were stained with black ash. Her face would be the next to melt off. Her eyeballs would turn into liquid and drain out of her empty eyesockets. Her lips would blacken from a kiss. 

 

She knew holding onto this person would permanently scar her, but she wanted to be held because it was warm.    
  
There was an intruder in the garden. They snuck in when god was not watching and used kerosene to water the flowers. A single spark from the friction between their bodies was enough to light the fire.    
  
The garden was the only place where she could remain hidden. Once it all burned away, the leaves, the trees, the flowers, the foilage, she would be naked and everyone would see her. Burnt up leaves and ash fell off the trees, and danced in the wind as if they were falling cherry blossoms.    
  
It’s all because of her. That woman poisoned the garden. No, the woman herself is poison. The lower half of her body is a snake, and the upper half is that of a naked laviscous woman, she had hair the same color as fire, and just as wild and untamed. 

 

She saw an ugly naked girl, and loved that ugliness.    
  
Lilith brought her mouth to the side of the apple and kissed it, leaving the marks of her lipstick on the flesh of the fruit. All the girl could think about was how much she wanted to bite the fruit exactly where the kiss mark had left. That girl had been thrown out of the garden, she was hated, she was transformed into a snake, she had wings on her back raw from having the feathers plucked out over and over again, and yet she was beautiful.    
  
Lilith was despised by god, and yet she loved Eve. 

  
_ If she could live outside the garden, then perhaps I too…  _

 

🧸

 

_ From my rotting body, flowers shall grow.  _   
  
Angie stared at the painting in front of her. Her eyes were dripping with dissatisfaction. She wanted to cry. The painting was of Eve and Lilith, Lilith cut open Eve’s belly and planted flowers inside, and Eve looked happy.    
  
Angie couldn’t understand the feelings of the characters in her painting. She wanted to dissect a living person to see which facial muscles were responsible for making expression then maybe she could see. People should just not have skin at all, maybe if there was nothing covering their internal organs then there would be nothing to hide.    
  


The masked boy reached up and entwined his fingers with her hair, before pulling her head sharply. “You forgot to eat again.”

 

He was walking back from the kitchen with two plates in his hand, he laid one down so they could sit on the floor and eat together. His old fashioned school uniform looked ridiculous with the oversized pink apron he borrowed but his face was straight as ever.    
  
“What’s it matter? I won’t die. I’m under atua’s divine protection.”   
  
“Actually yes, you will die if you don’t eat.”    
  
He was just like a nagging mother. Not that Angie knew what that was like. “Yeah, but you don’t care either way, ya? You look like the kind of guy who will hang out with corpses.”   
  
“Generally, people are easier to talk to when alive.”    
  
“It must be hard for you when all your friends are dead, nya-ha-ha-ha! Are you lonely? Are you lonely? Well, Atua will be your friend.”    
  
“You really don’t know how to cook for yourself?”    
  
“Whatever I need I just ask for it. The food, these art supplies, the followers just give it to me. I’m so lucky. I’m Atua’s chosen one. Atua loves all of his creations equally but he loves me more.” 

 

“I see. And if you were ever outside of this place what would you do?”    
  
“I…” Angie hesitated. If there was no cult, what would that girl look like? No matter how hard she tried she could not picture it. “I’d disappear.”

 

As long as she stayed within the garden god would care for her. She could eat any fruit from any tree, she just could not steal from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If she was in this place she would never starve. Even if she was naked, she would remain innocent.    
  
Angie did not want to think about that. She wanted to think about something else. Change of topic. She picked up a paint slider and stabbed it straight into Eve’s chest, and violated her, and the painting. 

  
That boy always watched Angie closely. She knew those eyes were just studying her, but still it was the first time she saw herself reflected in someone else’s eyes. She liked the way his always still eyes widened just a little in surprise. She wanted to break that face. She wanted to completely destroy him the way she did her paintings. If the paint cracked and chipped, if she scratched all of it off, she wondered what she would find underneath.    
  
“You’re going to burn this one, too? What a waste.”    
  
“The feelings in this painting are no good.”    
  
“No good?” 

  
“They’re bad.”    
  
Angie felt bandaged fingers wrap around her own from behind. “I don’t think so. Everyone’s feelings are beautiful. That is what I think.” 

 

No matter what feelings they expressed. That boy in the mask would accept them. Angie was certain he was always smiling behind his mask. She wanted to be like him. She wanted to smile more. 

  
Even if he were beaten, or chained up, or held prisoner. Even confronted with the ugliest sides of humanity, that boy would just smile. The bruises that were like pollution on his skin. The purple blotted areas that looked like they were a snake bite, with slowly spreading poison. He would just say  _ this is my connection with other people.  _ As if that violence was enough of a connection. As if being hit was proof that people would still touch a child as ugly as him. 

 

“Why do you destroy your paintings like that?” He asked her.    
  
“Because they’re dead. No matter how well I paint they look dead. I have no idea what living people feel.” 

 

She felt a neck kissing the nape of her neck. The cold way the knife’s edge slid along the curvature of her collar bone, she felt caressed, she felt valued. “Are you afraid to die?”    
  
“No.”   
  
“Do you want to die?”   
  
“No. But, I’m not afraid to die. I won’t get frustrated if I die early. It’s always been like this, ya? I don’t feel anything, Atua feels things for me.”    
  
Dying just means returning to Atua. All of the people in her cult had no interest in living in this world at all. They were bgging her again and again for salvation, for a perfect world that did not exist, that’s why they got their dirty hands all over her feet.    
  
The masked boy withdrew the knife. “Then, why don’t you draw portraits of those who are already dead?” He went back top playing with her hair between his bandaged fingers. Those eyes of his always regarded her the same way as he did art, but that made her happy because she did not want to be looked at like she was a little girl. “It’s called Vanitas. In the face of death, people’s feelings become naked. See-through.”    
  


That was when she stopped destroying the paintings she made.   
She still hated everything she made. She hated her own feelings, her ugly feelings, that desired to burn. Every time she showed a new painting to the masked boy, he was as delighted as a child.    
  
She wanted to be able to look at her feelings. She wanted to understand them.  She wanted to understand her feelings for that boy. 

  
Perhaps the snake crawled into the garden and tempted Eve because he was lonely. Perhaps Lilith had been lonely too before she ran away from the garden.    
  
But he left. He crawled away like a snake. And angie was reminded she was alone. 

 

“Hey, are you paying attention to what I’m saying at all?” Zerozaki suddenly asked her.    
  
“Nope.” Angie’s eyes flickered back to him. “Have you tried being more interesting? If you want Atua to love you, you should be lovable!” 

 

“You know what they call weirdo girls who spend all their time muttering to themselves about some god?”   
  
“Prophets?”   
  
“No, delusional idiots!” Zerozaki said. He was so animated, he looked like a wild wolf snapping his teeth at the air, barking and growling.    
  
“How are you feeling?”   
  
“I wanna kill someone.”   
  
“That’s not a feeling.”   
  
“Yeah it is, I feel like I wanna kill someone.” He took a swipe at the air. He got worked up so easily. “Everyone is pissing me off.” 

 

“How can they be pissing you off when killers like you don’t have real emotions, or feelings, let alone hearts?” 

 

“Quit being so mean.”    
  
“I’m not being mean. I’m just telling you that if you died not a single person would be sad about it. How’s that mean? Hey, come on tell me, tell me,  tell me.”   
  
“Yeah, I may stab and kill people but you hurt my feelings just now. You murdered my feelings. How do you feel, ya killer?” The serial killer began to pout. The banter between them would have continued on like that for a little while if Zerozaki did not suddenly turn his head. 

 

The way he smiled in that moment looked like a shark who had smelled blood in the water a mile away. 

 

He was just like a predator Zerozaki. He didn’t smile because he was happy. He was never goddamn happy, anyway. He smiled to show his teeth. “Yo, how’s it going little bro?” 

 

Munakata hesitated. The same way that Zerozaki had felt something about him from the moment they first encountered one another, Munakata also felt that. The same magnetic repulsion that two like objects had for one another.    
  
This was the first time Munakata had ever looked at someone without wanting to kill them. Zenkichi his first and only friend, his parents, his only sister, even Takumi who he had promised to look over and protect as a senpai. The moment he saw them he imagined what it would be like to pull the flesh from their bones and chop them into pieces. But the idea of killing Zerozaki suddenly made him nauseous, as if his body rejected the idea. 

 

Killing Zerozaki would be the ultimate taboo. It would be killing and eating his own kind. It would be cannibalism.    
  
“I’m not like you…”   
  
“Sure, sure, you’re not nearly as cool or sexy as I am. And nobody can be like me anyway, I’m an individual.” He pulled at the cellphone strap in his ear. “See, nobody could come up with an outfit this cool.”   
  
For a serial killer he was attention hungry. It was a terrible trait to have for a serial killer as most tried to disguise their crimes.    
  
“I’m not saying we’re the same. We’re just family.”   
  
“I have a family.”    
  
“Bet you haven’t seen them in years, right?”   
  
He wondered if his sister forgave him for ripping out her eyes. He wondered if his mother and father were ashamed of his son. If they regretted giving birth to him. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to tell them he tried his best, even if he couldn’t be the son they wanted.    
  
Zerozaki and Munakata, those born with the urge to kill.    
  
“Hey, hey, what about me? You’re leaving me out.” Takumi said. “I don’t care about being popular. In fact I feel people who kill for the popularity are sellouts, they’re just cheapening the art form. But you know, I still want someone to pat me on my head and tell me I did a good job.” 

 

Takumi who could not fit in. An odd one even among psycho killers. Zerozaki titled his head. “Eh? We’re nothing alike.” 

 

Takumi started to mutter to himself again. “What do I care if other people reject me anyway? I’m not someone meant to be understood by others. I’m a special existence. I’m a cool killer. I’m cool, right? Someone tell me, I’m cool.”    
  
“You seem really bothered by it.” Munakata commented next to him.    
  
“Awe, what? I thought I was doing a good job of hiding my feelings behind a cool mask. How did you see through my facade? That’s it, I’m going back to hiding in the locker. Inside the locker nobody can see my feelings.” 

 

“Hey you guys aren’t allowed to talk louder than me. My voice is the strongest, alright!” Zerozaki said, hoping to stand out a little more. He looked to Munakata and heard far in the background the rambling of chains.    
  
  


 

Other people’s feelings and worries which were so great they drove someone to cut their own wrists were almost nothing to Zerozaki. Even if his brother, his only family were to die right in front of him, he would feel the same as watching a sand castle knocked over. The wounds on other people, the cuts they left on their own wrists, meant almost nothing to Zerozaki. He just could not feel other people’s pain. Those wounds didn’t look so painful to him.    
  
When he became a complete bystader, he noticed. Everything they held dear was created. They were being controlled, by chains that someone else imagined for them. All the weight that held them down, was imaginary. People were held down, by other people’s values, by other people’s feelings, which were as real to them as paper mache chains.    
  
He could see them tied to other people. The rattling noise was raucous. It was so loud it drowned out every thought in his head. He looked at the boy in front of him and saw himself in the mirror. Munakata Kei was crushed by imaginary chains. He was restraining himself to the point of completely erasing himself.    
  
Murder had taken all the color from his world and reduced his reality to the state it was today.   
And he didn’t even care.   
He didn’t care if the world was color of monochrome. 

He probably never thought that there could be a person unfettered by those chains.    
Munakata had been struggling against the chains his entire life. He thought he wanted to be a person without chains, he really thought he truly desired release from those chains. But then, he met Zerozaki.    
  
What did he feel looking at a person who was truly free?   
Fear.    
  
Zerozaki felt the same.    
All he had wanted his entire life was to be connected to someone else. He wanted to be chained the way everyone else was. He wanted the ability to stop himself. He wanted to have friends that he could stop himself from killing. 

 

He looked at the chained up boy in front of him.   
He was afraid.    
The sound of chains. The sound of common sense. The sound of morals. It was like a scream between his ears.    
  
“Well, whatever…” Zerozaki muttered to himself. “To be honest I don’t give a shit about family either. I’m kind of a black sheep.”   
  
“Really? I thought you were an obedient child with good manners.” Kei said.    
  
  


“But we’re still connected. The three of us are the most obvious culprits for the daily killings. We should work together. What do ya think, ange?”   
  
“Atua says reply hazy, try again.”   
  
“What the hell are you, a magic eightball?” He snapped at her.    
  
“I don’t want to work with him.” Takumi disagreed.    
  
“You should learn to be more sociable with others.” Munakata said, sternly. 

  
“I have great social skills. I was the most popular kid in my middle school class. Everyone else in my class is dead, so there’s no way you can verify that.” 

  
Munakata could at least sympathize with Zerozaki as they both had somehow ended up babysitting a weirdo. Takumi still did not seem to want to get along with him, even though he claimed to love murderers the most. 

  
Takumi however pulled in close to Zerozaki and started to whisper to him. “Why are you going so far for a girl you’ve only known for a few days? You must know you’re being manipulated right? People aren’t that friendly to care for a complete stranger, in fact most people are meanines and bullies.”   
  
“Speaking from experience.”   
  
“Be quiet.”

 

“We’re not friends. She pisses me off to no end. I wanna kill her just to shut up.” Zerozaki said, as a smile danced on his lips. “But,that selfish little girl who does whatever she wants… to me she feels so real.”    
  
Even if they were both killers, Takumi and Zerozaki could not get along. They would both rather die than come to an agreement with the other.    
  
_ I am a human.  _ Ever since Angie had told him that it was like a sweet song stuck in his head.   
_ I am a human, I wanted to grow up into someone my big brother would be proud of. _ _   
_ _ I am a human, I wish for my family to be happy. _ _   
_ _ I am a human, if I fail I’m going to have to kill again. _ _   
_ _ I am a human, I make use of this fact to draw near humanity even more.  _ _   
_ _ I am a human, when that girl hit me, it hurt. I hated getting hit by big bro.  _ _   
_ _ I am a human, I murder people to prove that I’m me.  _ _   
_ _ I am a human, somehow it’s getting harder and harder to hold this knife with bruised knuckles.  _ _   
_ _ I am a human, I want someone to love.  _

 

Zerozaki was trying to live. He tried to be human. He just failed at it. He held onto a knife even though his hands were shaking. He moved quickly to step in front of Angie when Takumi got closer, even though it was still painful to move. 

 

_ I’m not human.  _ Takumi thought.  _ I’m a killer.  _   
  
They were different people. They were two people. They didn’t like each other.   
  
“Let’s work together then,” Munakata said stepping in front of Takumi and holding him back again.    
  
“Why are you such a good guy…?” Takumi mumbled. 

  
Zerozaki was the human failure, but Takumi desperately wanted to fail. They glared at each other as if Munakata was simply not there.   
  
_I’m a human. I’m a human. I’m a human._ _  
_ _I’m a killer. I’m a killer. I’m a killer._

 

“Hey, Ange. You don’t mind hanging out with these guys do you?”    
  
“As long as it doesn’t inconvenience me personally, I don’t care about what you do.”   
  
“Kahahahaaha!” Zerozaki laughed at her selfishness. “You’re a riot.”    
  
  


🧸

 

Emukae once told Kumagawa about how she intentionally poisoned her own garden. She poured herbicide into the water, until the roots all turned yellow, and all the flowers rotted.    
  
The house where she was not allowed to cry.    
The house where she was harshly denied.    
She buried her parents corpse’s in the backyard. She planted flowers on top of their grave.    
Slowly, the poison accumulated  in the soil.    
Slowly, everything was tainted.    
She watched it all turn rotten.    
A garden of corpse floewrs.    
  
She. With purposeful killing intent. Gripping the knife wrong. Brought it to her parent’s throat.

Again and again. And the most pleasant feeling spread through her body. Somewhere deep within her heart, she always wished something like this would happen.    
  
The decay was somewhere deep within her. The decay was inside of her heart. Like gangrene, soon it would spread to the rest of her body if she did not cut out her heart first. The family she wanted to kill, the family she enjoyed killing.   
  
She told Kumagawa all about it. 

『So what? They sound like jerks.』 

 

Kumagawa accepted everything she did just like that. He never looked away from people’s ugliness. He looked at the ugly girl in front of him and still smiled at her.    
  
“B-but, they’re dead because of me…” 

 

『Then, I guess they’re dead jerks now.』    
  
She felt sick.   
She felt like she wanted to vomit.   
So, why did she want to be close to this boy?   
When she was around him, she felt like no matter what she did, she would be forgiven. 

 

Emukae was happy, but she was scared. She suddenly understood why people always bullied and pushed around so easily. She realized why people were trying to stomp the kindness out of him, to beat him until all that kindness was gone. His kindness was a scary thing.    
  
The snake that crawled into the garden must have been kind too. That’s what Emukae thought. 

 

『Emukae-chan. I don’t care how much you hate yourself, I won’t hate you.』    
  
“Y-you will.”    
  
She gripped the knife the wrong way again and suddenly brought it to his neck. Kumagawa was the kind of person who could have a knife pulled on him mid-conversation, and then keep chatting with that carefree smile on his face.    
  
Kumagawa grabbed the knife, cutting his fingers on the blade as he dragged it closer to his neck. He cut just enough that blood started to fall down the side of his neck. 『I’m not your family. I won’t start to hate you, but if I do. Then you can kill me just like you killed them.』 

 

“R-really?”   
  
It was so stupid. She just wanted one person to tell her they did not hate her. Mikan always looked to Emukae like she was some kind of bold girl who never cared about what other people thought but that could not be farther from the truth. 

 

_ Sorry, Mikan I lied.  _ _   
_ _ I’m actually a shy girl.  _   
  
Emukae thought she understood the difference between herself and Mikan. Mikan wanted to die for the person she loved, and the person Emukae loved would let her kill him. 

 

When Kumagawa was around all she did was hide behind him. When he was gone all she did was want him to come back to her. She still had not figured out how to live on her own. She still could not live like lilith. Even if she was a snake from the waist down, even if poison dripped from her teeth she still did not want to be hated.    
  
Eve ate the apple because she wanted to be loved. But Lilith rejected love.    
They were fundamentally incompatible. 

 

Emukae observed Mikan, who was resting her head on her lap again. Emukae did not experience love at first sight when she spotted Mikan. For the first time, she realized.  _ Ah. Tsumiki Mikan is more unfortanate than me.  _   
  
She felt a little stronger because Mikan was weak. She felt like she could tell any kind of lie because Mikan was gullible. She thoought  _ that’s so sad  _ and the feeling of envy Emukae felt towards happy, talented people collapsed instantly. And then for the first time Emukae thought she wanted to be friends with someone besides Kumagawa. She wanted to open her heart to someone else again, and be hurt by that person again.   
  
But an unpleasant feeling that resembled self-hatred was still there every time she glanced at Mikan. A twisted-self consciousness, every time she thought of Mikan, she thought of herself, and she was happy to see Mikan suffering the same way she was, and she hated that. 

 

“You care so much about what other people think about you,” Emukae said.   
  
“How am I supposed to know how I feel about myself if I don’t worry about how other people feel?” Mikan’s panicked voice arranged. She fussed more, her hair spilling everywhere. 

 

“There’s no need to worry about it. Other people’s feelings are all lies.” 

 

Mikan sighed. “It’d be easier if I could just forget. If I was like that girl who couldn’t remember a single thing-”   
  
“Oh, you mean Enoshima?”   
  
“Ehhh? Enoshima-san was Otonashi-san?”

 

“Do you pay attention to anybody besides yourself? Gosh, no wonder you never do anything.”   
  
“Stop making me sound like the useless comic relief!”   
  
“But, you’re so funny Mikan. Doesn’t it make you feel better when other people laugh at your pain? They say laughter is the best medicine.”   
  
“That’s not sound medical advice.” 

 

Suddenly, the window they were sitting in front of was smashed to pieces. Mikan screamed. Emukae merely raised her head and looked up at.    
  
“Oh, hello there.” 

  
For a girl who loved drama, Emukae’s reaction was rather undramatic.    
  
“Yo.”    
  
Juzo said, before he dropped Yukizome Chisa who he was carrying over his shoulder on the ground in front of him. Mikan flinched away in pain and could not look into her teacher’s eyes. Miss Yukizome had been a kind person. Enoshima Junko poisoned that woman. Mikan helped.    
  
It was like she was staring at the corpse of her former teacher. The only adult that had never hit or lost patience with Mikan. At the time Mikan could not believe that a person as kind as Chisa could really exist in this world.   
  
Maybe she was right. Chisa had never been that kind.    
  
“Hey, you two. I need you to watch over her.”    
  
“Why would I do something helpful?” Emukae asked.   
  
“I’ll give you goddamn candy if you shut up.” Juzo’s patience wore thin.    
  
Chisa looked up. She thought she knew both of the boys better than they knew themselves. “Are you going to play hero now? Do you think if you save Kyosuke he’ll fall for you?”   
  
“Is that what you really think?”   
  
“Who knows what I think. I’m just as good at lying to myself at other people.” 

 

Juzo kicked the wall to get her attention. He looked like he wanted to break something. He looked like he wanted to break himself. “Do you really think the only reason you care about Munakata is because he saved you? Ain’t that sad? Loving him as some kind of fake hero instead of the guy right in front of you.”   
  
“Then what about you-” 

  
  
“He was cold to you wasn’t he, Yukizome? He always kept you at a distance. And you, liked being at that distance because he’d never see what you were hiding. But ain’t that lonely?”    
  
“You were saved by him too. You’re his biggest fanboy. You always have been.”   
  
“I…” 

 

He remembered vomiting alone every day.  He remembered how he stopped eating because of how sick to his stomach boxing made him. How he thought someone like him was not good for anything. He remembered the way Munakata made him feel when he asked Sakakura to watch his back. He remembered what it felt like being thrown away by Munakata. That Munakata made him feel that way, that his happiness and sadness was all tied up in one person. It felt wrong.   
  
“I saved myself.” Juzo said as he pulled his jacket off. He put it on Chisa’s shoulders, so she would not be cold when he left her alone. “Munakata just stuck by me when I was saving myself.”    
  
“It’s my fault.” Chisa said. “I… told too many lies. You two would be happy right now if it wasn’t for me.”   
  
“Shut the hell up already, there’s no way we would be happy if you weren’t here.” Yukizome Chisa was his best friend. Juzo would not hear otherwise. “You did a bunch of bad shit, but that doesn’t make all the good shit you did lies. It’s not like you stopped being our friend.”    
  
Chisa really did not understand why he would not throw her out. The person who had been their friend was a lie from the start. She was a snake pretending to be a woman. Poison pooled  dripped from her mouth like it was drool. 

  
She was lilith. When night fell she killed children. In anger for god killing her own children, she killed other children. Her castles were overgrown with thorns, her fortresses were thistles and briars.    
  
Her glorious splendor terrified the spirits, destroyed angels, demons, and she emptied out the hearts of men. She was absurdly beautiful. She was created to be loved. If she went back to the garden god would forgive her, but that was why she could never go back. She didn’t want to be forgiven.    
  


She hated being loved by adam.    
  


“Figure your shit out already, and save yourself. It’s annoying dealing with you when you’re like this.” Juzo said, as he climbed back out the window. He was all talk like usual. Juzo was just too fragile to hurt someone. Chisa always knew that. When he got into fights, he always booked far more broken than the people he fought against.    
  
“Hey teach.”   
  
Emukae had spoke up after Juzo left.    
  
“Do you have any advice for me finally?”    
  
Chisa scrutinized the girl composed of faded colors like she was a distant, blurry memory. She remembered. It was her first day of the reserve course, after she was suspended due to Komaeda’s ridiculous stunt. She didn’t know right from left in regards to the reserve course, and it was Emukae-chan who was the first to strike up a conversation with her.    
  
“Nice to meet you! Is there anything you don’t understand?” She was beaming with friendliness, despite how sickly her appeance was. This was the gesture of a girl looking out for her teacher who did not know what she was doing.    
  
She was horribly irritated. And a little bit grateful. Because somewhere in that bright, innocent aura, echoed a slight resemblance to a girl she used to know.    
  
“Yeah, don’t grow up like me.”   
  
Chisa Yukizome said.   
She spoke from her heart.   
It wasn’t a lie. 


	50. I am Silver and Exact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening is a quote from jujutsu kaisen

_Even if there were a button that made the humans I hate die, I probably wouldn’t push it._

_But if it were a button that made the humans who hate me die, I would push it without hesitation._

 

🧸  
  


Mirrors aren’t cruel, they’re truthful.  
Human eyes are clouded with preconceptions. Human eyes are liars.  
  
The eyes of other people were like invisible razor blades to him. People are born alone and die alone, and Ikkun was fine with that, what he hated was how he was forced to associate with other people along the way even if there was no real way of understanding them.  
  
The world is brimming with people observing him, no matter where he wanted to escape to. There were only two ways out: biological death or social death.  
  
As long as everybody else was still alive, he would continue to be suffocated, cramped into a tiny, narrow box, forced to endure the claustrophobic space with others. Most people were not good people, they were benign, they were listless, and they could be convinced to turn hateful the moment they believed they were right.  
  
Humans are so noisy. He hated noisy people. Their voices were so, so sharp, sharp like razor blades. Laughter. He heard laughter somewhere in the distance. It probably had nothing to do with him and yet it sounded like they were sneering at him.  
  
It was enough to make him want to kill someone just to shut them up. Almost enough. He was sure everyone else felt the same. Deep inside, they must hate him, they must feel the urge to attack him. In order to not get hurt, he had to be somebody that others could not see. He had to be invisible. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy, if only he could give others a reason to be apathetic to him.  
  
He just couldn’t accept the feelings of other people. He didn’t want to be loved, or hated. 

By doing so he lost the chance to find someone who understands him, but even that understanding and acceptance would hurt him.His anxiety could only keep growing and growing with no relief.  
  
Why was he so sensitive? He barely had a personality to begin with and yet he was so self-conscious. For someone with no friends, and no one he particularly loved, he based his entire personality off of what others expected of him. Still it’s not his fault. If only everyone were a little more gentle to him. 

He wished someone would understand how delicate he was. But such a person doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as a person who would never hurt you. As Ikkun thought of that he felt a little bit lonely.

The ceiling was leaking. Water droplets fell from above them pooling below. Kamukura Izuru wanted to be alone, but being in the same room as Ikkun was basically the same as being alone. He was just a ghost occupying the same room. It was like conversing with an echo, a reflection that had somehow stepped out of the mirror.  
  
The two of them had been discussing back and forth the cases of the serial killings happening on the city streets, every night they went to sleep with no progress. 

“You’re asking the wrong question.” Iikun finally spoke up, which was a rarity for him because he preferred quietly muttering to himself. “Why do you think they were killed?”  
  
“There was no reason they had to die. Its random, and meaningless, ergo boring.” Kamukura’s hair like black seaweed clung to his scalp. He tried to hide his emotions but there was sweat already pooling on his brow, making his hair even stickier. He looked like something that had been dragged up from the muck at the bottom of the ocean. He had only a passing resemblance to human shape.  
  
“I think the reason people kill one another is actually quite simply.” Ikkun ignored Kamukura. Hinata noticed. He was extra sensitive to when he was being ignored. “An eyesore. If you see something in the way, the logical next step is to remove it. Like stepping on a sand castle in the beach.”  
  
“But, these people-”  
  
“They’re not relevant to any of the players here. They’re unnamed extras. They wouldn’t even have their names appear on the cast list, just like me. A murderer with a grudge against a specific person would be killing the members of the game one by one, but this killer’s grudge is against the masses.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“To put it another way, this person doesn’t bear a grudge against any specific person. Thus, there’s no reason for them to kill people. And yet, other people are an eyesore to them.”  
  
Living means.  
Causing a disturbance to others. 

“Now let me pose you a question, and please answer with your own opinion. What does it mean to form a personal relationship?”  
  
“Pulling close to someone, knowing that it may hurt you.”  
  
“What an excellent answer. That’s even a text book answer. Do you have a talent for making friends as well.” Ikkun who had been mostly a silent observer this whole time suddenly felt talkative. Hinata had only witnessed a sudden change like that once before in Komaeda. “Now if you were to go and rephrase that, it essentially means ‘choosing somebody’. But let’s think about that for a minute. To choose somebody means to not choose somebody else. It’s logically impossible for a human to be liked by everyone.”

“Do you want me to praise you for pointing out the obvious? The next thing you’re going to tell me is the power of friendship doesn’t apply to real life.”  
  
“Why are you so grumpy? I thought you weren’t supposed to have feelings.” 

The boat was leaking. The boat needed to be fixed. A drop from the leaky ceiling fell and hit Kamukura in the eyeball, and agitated him. The ship was old, its wood was rotted, it barely floated, it was sinking slowly as dark ocean water flooded into the cracks, and swirled around in his head dragging him down towards a burial at sea.  
  
The ship needed repeat. The wooden planks were torn out one by one. The wooden planks, the structure, it was all ripped out and taken from him. Hey, hey, when did he become someone else? Was it when his preferences were erased? When his emotions were dulled? Or perhaps the very moment he no longer remembered Matsuda Yasuke?  
  
He still remembered the look on Matsuda’s face when he asked _who are you?_ That boy hated being forgotten the most, Kamukura felt like he had hurt Yasuke in a way he never expected to be hurt again.  
  
He wondered when Hajime Hinata had died. At which surgery did he disappear? Did Hajime Hinata want to die? The wooden structure of the ship creaked and groaned, and Hinata was just waiting for it to capsize so he could finally sink in blue, so he could finally disappear in blue.  
  
Hinata brought his hand back to his hand to his forehead, and pushed his bangs back. The red stitches in his forehead were his crown of thorns.  
  
“People are easy to fool. There are plenty of examples of idols who are liked by everyone. Whatever point you’re trying to make is reductive at best, if you’re going to try to say something, at least say something interesting.”  
  


“Jeez, what a tough crowd.” Not that Iikun conisdered himself any kind of performer. Only people who were worth looking at stepped on stage. “People aren’t as easy to trick as you think. I’ve wasted eighteen years of my life trying to think about the best ways to trick people, but I honestly don’t think anybody is fooled.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“People see what you don’t want them to see. People are always watching you. Now let me ask you something, have you ever thought there were just too many people in the world?” 

Izuru’s reaction was impossible to discern. His expression as lukewarm as water, as bottomless as water.

A boy named Hajime Hinata who had been drowned. He disappeared and no one cared. The world didn’t end when he disappeared. His parents destroyed his room and got rid of his things, all evidence that he had been alive. The world completely ignored him and would not even let it rain. 

If he had not become Kamukura, he would just be one of the nameless reserve course students that fell from the sky like rain. He was just one single raindrop, among the countless many in the sky. He was one of the people the world could do without, he knew that the moment Ikkun asked that question.  
  
“Are you saying it’s forgivable to kill someone? Is that where this pretentious and self-important philosophy is going.”  
  
“No,” Ikkun answered without hesitation. “It’s not a matter of forgiving or not forgiving. It’s just that murder is the absolute worst thing. The desire to take a life is the most despicable human emotion.”  
  
Complete nonsense. Who was really the hopeless one here?  
  
“It’s deciding that someone’s pain is less important than yours. It’s deciding that someone’s feelings matter less than yours. To kill someone, you have to justify yourself, you have to forgive yourself. Someone who thinks that way can’t possibly be called human.”  
  
“Then, if I were to try to kill you right now?”  
  
“Awe. Poor Kamu-chan, did I hurt your feelings? I didn’t even think you were listening to me, talking to me is so boring.” Ikkun gave a sigh. That passive agressive way he liked to taunt others was so familiar. “To be honest, I don’t care enough about other people to say something like _I’m a pacifist, I would find a way to solve it without violence._ No, I suppose I would resist. I mgiht even kill them. But, I would also realize the moment I kill someone else to protect my own I won’t be forgiven even when I’m dead.”  
  
“Even if you didn’t have a choice?”  
  
“There was a choice, I could have just died. Actually, I should just do that. It’s much more difficult to kill someone to live, why is a lazy person like me always making things more difficult for myself, jeez?”  
  
Kamukura said nothing. Arguing with Komaeda was fun. No matter how frustrating it got, he was always smiling, or wanted to smile at least. This was not a conversation. He was merely looking in the mirror, feeling anxious, worrying himself endlessly about the appearance of the boy looking back.  
  
He felt like he was being watched from the other side of the mirror. The glow of the television screens that Kamukura had piled up in the background of his hospital room, gave off a pale light that lit up Ikkun’s face.  
  
“Sorry we got off topic. That always happens when I’m talking. Even though I’m a simple and straight forward young boy with a pure heart.”  
  
“No you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not. Well, I was saying I can understand how the killer thinks because I’m a person capable of murder. Why do you think that is?”  
  
“Why would I want to understand how you think?” Hinata asked him.  
  
“I guess you’re right. I’m going to tell you anyway.”  
  
“Boo.”

“The reason is, I can’t understand how other people feel. I can’t connect to their feelings at all. For example, I have a certain female friend. She’s always super-happy, she could live the most tragic life possible but she’d still smile. And I think that’s because she doesn’t know any other emotion. She can feel hope because she doesn’t feel despair, she can barely comprehend when other people are sad or angry.” 

An absolutely perfect person, would have no contents inside of them. They would have had to have all their insides scooped out. They would have no soul. It’s a soul that makes someone decompose physically and mentally. It’s a soul that turns a living body slowly into a corpse. 

A revived corpse made up from dead body parts sewn together would certainly never have a soul. That was the Kamukura project. 

Ikkun had met someone like that too, he had a friend exactly like that. A friend who could not cry, the same way he could not laugh out loud. A friend who was never happy, or sad, and did not know what those emotions even were. Ikkun did not pity them at all.  
  
He was jealous.  
If this pain, if these miserable experiences that continued to pile up around him.  
If that was what made him human, if that means he had a soul. Then he could do without.  
  
“I guess I’m basically talking about an ability to feel empathy. I can’t make heads or tails of other people’s emotions even if I tried. The same way a person who can’t feel pain might accidentally bleed to death without even noticing, I could beat someone to death and not hear them begging me to stop. As a result, I have to suppress myself.” 

Komaeda’s face appeared on the screen behind him.  
Komaeda was smiling.  
Ikkun was not.  
  
“I spend so much time not being myself. It’s not even funny.” 

“Nagi…”  
  
“And that’s why I can’t forgive a murderer. How could I? How could someone be so selfish as to kill someone else. How could they be so self important? They’re just a child who can’t control their own emotions. They just can’t deal with it like everybody else can.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Just kidding, I don’t think that at all.” 

Komaeda was condemning him. Komaeda hated him. Komaeda thought he was despair. Kamukura Izuru, who plunged the world, and all of Komaeda’s friends into despair just because he was a little bored. Izuru who killed Komaeda by putting him in the death game, because he didn’t want to experience the sadness of losing him.  
  
Who broke his own toys so someone else would not break them.  
Who broke things and then called them his. 

“I’m just saying. The person who killed strangers like it was nothing, like they were extras in a play probably thinks they’re more important than others. They probably don’t even think of their friends as real people. Jeez, what a bother. I hope I never meet them.”  
  
“Then, why are you investigating?” 

“Well, I’m not so much investigating. There’s just something I want to know. I want to meet whoever did it, and I want to ask them. _Can you forgive yourself?”_  
  
If his friends were to despise him. Well, he would hate it but he would find some way to live. However, that question was the one Hinata cut himself on.  
  
He hated himself.  
He wanted to die.  
He wanted to die and become Kamukura.  
He wanted to die and become hope, the hope that Komaeda loved.  
  
There was no love or dislike in the mirror. There was just himself looking back.  
And there ewas Komaeda, an intense apathy in his eyes. 

 _"I won't forgive you."_  
  
Komaeda said to him.  
He did not choose Komaeda. He did not choose Komaeda.  
He chose himself and that meant not choosing Komaeda.  
He wanted to be the one who chose Komaeda, when no one else would.  
He wanted to be the only one who wanted him.  
But in the end. He could only. Choose himself.  
And that was why he hated Hinata Hajime.  
Self loathing, self loving, self destruction, self harm, it was all just self-importance in the end.   
  


🧸

 

“Yonaga-san?” 

Munakata politely called out to her, but she ignored him. For her it must have been like nobody else existed, and this city was just her sandbox to play in, what a carefree girl.  
  
She was too busy working on her painting of Zerozaki. The moment she started drawing a killer could sneak up behind her and stab her fatally, and she would probably just keep drawing as she bled out.  
  
“It’s no good. When she gets like this she can’t hear you, no matter how much you scream at her.” Zerozaki said.  
  
“I’m surprised you didn’t stab her,” Takumi muttered.  
  
“Hey, I’m not a slut. I don’t whip my knife out and stab it into anybody.”  
  
“You’re a serial killer,” Munakata said.  
  
“Oh damn, guess you’re right.”

All three of them had gathered in the church. Angie stood at the center. They were just planets in her orbit. Takumi was on the floor. Munakata was standing guard with his back to them. 

“Gravity is too much of a burden for me. The floor is my only friend. The floor embraces me.”  
  
Takumi said when Munakata asked him if he was okay. Munakata assumed he was suffering from something similiar to sensory overload and decided it was best to just leave him alone for awhile. 

Both Munakata and Takumi averted their eyes from Hitoshiki. They were averting their eyes because Angie had talked Zerozaki into posing nude. No matter how much Zerozaki barked, or bared his teeth as a threat, he found himself being ordered around by the whims of a little girl again.  
  
“Not enough blood… Need more blood… So I’ll… Haahhh! Stop. Stop. Too much…” Angie rambled in her sleep like state, drool coming out of the corner of her mouth as she worked.  
  
“Hm? Yonaga-san, are you alright?” Munakata asked again.  
  
“Oh, she just mutters creepy shit like that when she’s working. It was kind of scaring me too, but like I cut people into pieces even after they’re dead mainly for aesthetic reasons so who am I to judge?”  
  
Zerozaki shrugged his naked shoulders. Zerozaki Hitoshiki painted in white. His whole body was thin, and compact. His muscles were so perfectly carved out from his frame. He looked like pygmalion, a beloved statue, kissed and brought to life. His skin still had the coloration of marble.  
  
There was a sharpness to his beauty, a danger. His bright red eyes were a warning sign. Takumi's pulse quickened just looking at them. His pale lips parted to reveal sharp teeth. Those teeth dug into his flesh. A kiss to his shoulder. A kiss to his neck. A body so sharp, and angular you could cut yourself on him. Perfectly tight and compact hips and ass.  
  
There was no part of Zerozaki that looked easy to hold onto. He would slip out of your hands the moment you had him. Takumi would have to dig his claws into the flesh if he ever wanted to have him. That small body was barely restrained. It held nothing back. It would slam into him and break him, it would climb over him and devour him.

“I get it, she wanted to paint something horrifyingly ugly. That’s why she asked to paint you naked,” Takumi said. He must not have grown up like middle school, he still made fun of people like a middle schooler.

“Shut up, I’m pretty as hell! I’m a pretty killer! I’ll kill you with my good looks!” Zerozaki, for a killer who did not care about the feelings of others was surprisingly self conscious.  
  
“What do you care about your looks anyway? I’m not saying that I’m socially inept or anything, but most people don’t look at me, and do everything they can to avoid eye contact therefore it’s no problem if I don’t brush my hair, or wear the same suit for an entire week.” Takumi muttered as he rolled over on the ground. “It’s not like anybody cares about me anyway, so I don’t need to care about myself.”

“Well, I want someone to like me. Err… well, I wouldn’t hate it. I wanna like me at least.”  
  
“Ewe gross, self esteem. But if someone liked you, you’d probably just kill them.” Takumi groaned like the undead. His greatest aspiration right now seemed to be transforming into a zombie.  
  
“Ehhh? Why would I want to kill someone I’m attracted to? What kind of sicko do you think I am?” It was hard for Zerozaki to sit still. He was just so full of energy. Angie threw a paint spreader to remind him, he just barely dodged being impaled. “There’s something wrong with you man.”  
  
“Well of course there is. I kill people.”  
  
“I mean besides that.” 

Munakata got along well enough with Zerozaki, or rather he was so patient, and polite it was almost impossible for someone to get along badly with him. Munakata simply changed himself to suit other people’s tempo. 

Munakata just wanted to have friends. He thought getting along with other people was the most important thing. So, he looked back and forth uneasily as Takumi and Zerozaki continued to not get along.  
  
“Hijirihara-kun, get off the floor. I need to speak with you.”  
  
“No, the floor is my only comfort in this cruel world. I am this floor, completely flat, and everyone walks all over me.”  
  
“Fine, I will lay there with you.” Munakata forgot his dignity and fell on the floor spread eagle. 

Takumi never understood the feeling of claustrophobia. The smaller and darker the space you were, the more you stayed hidden. If he did feel something like claustrophobia, it was the feeling of being around other people. If there were too many people in a room he felt like there was not enough space.  
  
Claustrophobia to him was the fear of other people in your space.  
But, that meant being alone.  
  
“Hijirihara-kun. Do you actually like murder?”

“I love murder more than anything else-”  
  
“Yes, I know. You have that speech memorized.” Munakata said cutting him off suddenly. “What I’m asking is do you really enjoy murder? Are you happy all of your middle school friends were killed by Ikusaba-san? I’m talking about your behavior.”  
  
“Is there something wrong with my behavior? Besides the fact that I don’t know how to dress myself, don’t know how to act in public, and can’t read the room there’s nothing wrong with my behavior. I know how to act like a person. Look at me, being a person.”  
  
Munakata was good at being silent for long stretches of time. It complemented Takumi’s habit of filling up the empty air with as many words as possible. “Every time you meet a murderer you react with disgust. You claim you want to find the perfect murderer who simply kills for the art of killing, but you kill every single murderer you come across.” 

“That’s because they’re sell outs. I was into murder before it was cool.”  
  
“And if you really did admire cool serial killers, you would have fallen head over heel for Zerozaki-kun, but you can’t stand him.”  
  
“Hey, did you just call me cool?” Zerozaki asked self consciously again.  
  
“So you really want to kill people? Do you really love killers? Maybe the reason you’re too scared to face Shuuji-kun is because…”  
  
“I can’t hear you… I can’t hear you. Lalalala. I’m like vincent van gogh. I cut off my ears and called it a masterpiece.”  
  
“He’s you, right?” 

Takumi sweat slicked. He looked terminally ill. He looked like someone had shoved him into that suit to try to force him to look presentable. 

  
“Hey, kid, you’re a survivor of the giboura incident right?” 

Zerozaki was an eyesore. He was an eyesore because he was naked. He was an eyesore because he made no attempt to hide his wounds.  He didn’t bother to hide what a repugnant person he was at all. He was an eyesore, he was an eyesore, he was an eyesore.  
  
Takumi laughed. He tried to laugh louder than the chains he could hear. Walking around was too much of a pain. He had to drag those chains behind him. It would seem he had developed a bug. His brain forcibly entered a shutdown state. He couldn’t form thoughts. He couldn’t hear words anymore.  
  
Rattle, rattle, rattle.  
  
_There’s something wrong with me._ He was aware of how desperate of a person he was. Takumi brought his hands to his head. He needed to kill. He needed someone to die. He needed to reset. He would kill himself. He would come back to life. Then everything would be fine and his brain would start working again.  
  
“Jeez, just mentioning the incident and you’re already like this, huh?” Zerozaki’s voice was so loud it sounded like it was coming from speakers positioned next to his eardrums. 

The bodies of all of his classmates torn into pieces like unloved dolls. The felt and cotton that made up their insides thrown carelessly all over the ground. It was beautiful. He loved blood because it was beautiful. He loved blood because he was afraid he would hate it otherwise. He loved his trauma because he did not want to hate himself.  
  
“Well, I think I can understand. I tried to pretend to be normal once too and I failed. I did homework every night, and went to school and talked to my friends about what I saw on television. As a result of that, every kind in my middle school class got killed but me.”  
  
“Hey, quit talking about all that like you’re a person. Like you’re like me.”  
  
“You always say exactly what’s on your mind, huh?”  
  
“No, I’m a very shy person who always hides his true feeligns from others.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever, anyway. I was literally born into a family of killers, I spend every second thinking about how to kill someone, but when someone massacred my middle school class I hated it. It felt like my heart was broken.”

Hey, why did he want to kill people?  
Not to change the world.  
Not to avenge his classmates. When he met other killers, he wanted to kill them because they pissed him off. He would kill them out of a simple hatred. He didn’t feel any love at all 

“You’re such a poser. You can’t stand me because you hate seeing the real thing, hate seeing someone who doesn’t need to pretend.”  
  
“Do you know how annoying it is to hear you talk? Do you have any idea how much you annoy others?”  
  
“You’re just a traumatized kid.You’re every other killer with a sad boo hoo pity me backstory.”  
  
And to Zerozaki that was.

A riot.  
  
Takumi was the most hackneyed, worthless killer imagiable.  
He was to a degree that even disappoints himself an unremarkable person.  
  
Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle.  
  
He could hear them. He could hear them in his ears, which could no longer hear at all or process sounds. He knew, in truth. He knew for a long time. The one who was chained down, the one who was chaining him down the most, was not other people’s expectaions.  
  
It was himself. The sound of chains that had always been wrapped around him.  
  
Munakata smiled so kindly.  
  
“You’re just afraid to talk to your friend, because he’s suffering the same way you are right? It’s alright, everyone gets afraid of stuff like that.”  
  
Munakata who was so kind, so understanding. No matter what Takumi did, Munakata always was patient with him.  
  
But Takumi hated that.  
He had no idea why anybody put up with him.  
He was the most boring killer imaginable.  
He should just die already. 


	51. Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Shuuji liked viewing the world through the scope of a sniper’s rifle. The farther away he was from other people. As the crosshairs fell on Munakata and Sakakura the moment before they clashed, Shuuji could only think about how much he wanted to see them dance.  
  
If none of you are going to act like humans the least you can do is dance your best dance on strings.

Munakata’s thin, lithe body moved through the air as sharp as a razor. His every movement was so delicate and pointed, when the side of Juzo’s face was nicked by his sword he felt like he was being cut on glass.  
  
Perhaps Juzo was an idiot for fighting a man with a sword bare-handed. No matter how strong he became, Juzo could only think of himself as an idiot who only knew violence. Even if he was praised as talented all he ever saw was violence. Sakakura had to tell himself that this strength of his was for protecting others.  
  
But…  
  
The person he wanted to use that strength to protect was the one he was fighting against. How dramatic. What melodrama. This, this was all happening because he couldn’t have a single human conversation with his best friend.  
  
Munakata kept slicing the air around him. He looked like he was trying to cut his way out of a forest. Just how lost was his friend? Juzo kept dodging, keeping his hands at his chest in a boxing stance even though he could not throw any punches. If Munakata got in too close he would have to rely on his legs.  
  
He thought back on all of the fights he had up until this point. To be honest, those opponents were all boring. Juzo always entered the ring with the absolute confidence he would win. In comparison, even if Juzo could throw punches he did not think he would be able to even touch Munakata now. It was like he was fighting against a mirage. A silver mist that dazzled him in the light.  
  
“Hey, come talk to me man.”  
  
Munakata said nothing.  
  
“So cold.”  

Munakata forgot about despair. He forgot about Yukizome Chisa. He just wanted to cut Sakakura Juzo. He wanted to see that man bleed. So, the two of them danced on the city streets together. 

There were several abandoned cars around them, some of them even driven into buildings. All of the cars were ruined. Sakakura had ducked and wove in between them to dodge Munakata’s blows. All he could do was run away. He finally got cornered and jumped onto the hood of a car, he felt like he was in a goddamn stage play.  
  
Munakata sliced forward and Sakakura realized he had nowhere to step back to dodge it. He held both of his hands defensively at his side. Crunch. Fresh blood was so wet, and so warm. “Come on, don’t be so shy.” Sakakura taunted.  
  
These cuts were only skin deep.  
If Munakata loved him.  
He would cut all the way down to the bone.  
  
“ I don’t give a shit about hope. I never liked school that much, and a school that treated all of its students like that probably deserved to fall.”

Munakata was the school’s greatest success story. He was a model student. Insulting that school was an insult to him. The place that saved him. The place that made him who he was.  
  
He stopped caring about swinging around his sword, and punched Juuzo straight in his teeth. He could feel his own knuckles being cut by Juzo’s teeth, and just hit him again. His white skin teared so easily, like it was nothing more than wax paper.  
  
Juzo endured the blow to his face, and smiled. Munakata was just so goddamned romantic. He turned his body around and kicked Munakata in the side. Now that he had drawn Munakata in close, he had to crush him in one blow to disarm him.  
  
“I hated every day I was at that school. I hate my talent. I hated being praised. That entire place is just full of self-obsessed geniuses who want to pat themselves on the back.” 

Munakata said nothing.  
  
“But, I never hated you. You and Chisa were the only thing I liked about that place.”  
  
Munakata said nothing.  
  
“Just let Hope’s Peak burn. Aren’t we the ones who were by your side all this time? Just talk to us like people. Fuck hope. Fuck despair. Why can’t you just talk to us like we’re your friends?” 

Stab.  
Juzo speaking through the heart was met with a sword sliding in underneath his heart. It was a completely clean cut. The metal sunk into his flesh. It was cold. 

“You’re not my friends.” Munakata said. “Why didn’t you just tell me how you really felt?” 

How he really felt?  
Was Munakata…  
  
“You both lied to me and then continued to pretend to be my friend to my face. I would have preferred it if you hated me. I don’t want to be betrayed with a kiss-”  
  
Munakata, with a dramatic flourish grabbed his sword with both hands and twisted the hilt. The entire sword suddenly grew red, and what Juzo’s body which had been frozen over a moment ago was suddenly on fire.  
  
He was going to burn up in his feelings for Munakata. 

Fire and water did not mix. The ice turned too quickly to steam.  
The steam blasted in his face, like a suffocating kiss.  
Sakakura was not sure, if he was really frozen, if he was really burnt.  
He had lost all sensation.  
The way Munakata’s glowing word burned his wound made it look like was bleeding ash. He felt his insides melt. As flames spiraled inside of his body he saw the way the light danced off of Munakata’s ice white skin. Fire and ice looked so lovely together. It was a pity they destroyed each other by nature. 

With the last of his strength he reached out for Munakata in front of him. He was always trying to find the smallest amount of warmth from ice. Munakata always, slipping away from them.  
  
This time he would not let go. His three fingers grabbed the sword, wrapping around the edge. He ignored the way the fire screamed against his skin. He forced his body to accept the commands from his brain, his muscles pulled harder than they ever had before. 

  
Juzo slowly pulled the sword out just by holding the blade. When it was all the way out, the wound did not bleed because it had been already cauterized. Juzo smiled at Munakata. The same way he did when they were kids. 

Then he put all the force in his body into smashing his forehead against Munakata. Munakata’s body went slack, and he let go of his sword. His head fell against Sakakura’s chest. At the end only one of them was still standing.  
  
Juzo smashed through the mirror to get to the other side where Munakata was.  
  
Sakakura put Munakata’s arm around his shoulder. “And the winner by knockout. The crowd goes wild. Aaaaaaahhhh…” Juzo muttered to himself, before he started to drag Munakata forward. 

“Damnit why am I…”  
  
He stepped off the car, and made it a few fuzzy footsteps forward.  
  
“So soft.”  
  
Juzo made it three more steps, before collapsing forward. Him and Munakata fell on the ground next to each other. 

Shuuji removed his eye from the scope of the rifle. He walked away from his hideaway, and took the elevator down to the city below. Ah, he loved elevators. Boxes of steel that moved up and down. He wished they were smaller. He wanted to shove himself somewhere more compact and reset himself to zero. 

His mind was best when it was at zero. That way no emotion could sway him from doing what was right. He could suppress the disgust that rose up within himself every time he took another life.  
  
Munakata and Sakakura’s bodies had fallen next to each other like they were Romeo and Juliet at the end of the tragedy. Even Shuuji’s heart fluttered, seeing such a scene on his stage. “I understand how you feel, Munataka-sensei.” Shuuji said standing in front of them.  
  
“How can we possibly be the good guys if we’re the ones hurting our friends like this?” Shuuji unsheathed a particularly large knife, that unfolded like a barbor’s razor. He placed it at his own neck. 

“What we need is a villain! Killing someone no matter what the reason, is just plain murder.” 

Shuuji.  
Enjoyed talking to himself.  
Because he did not have any friends.  
  
“If you kill a villain, then you’re a hero.”  
  
Shuuji heard no response.  
  
“Huh? What are you saying? There’s no villains in reality.”  
  
Shuuji pulled out his phone from his pocket. He smiled for the camera and took a selfie, right before getting to work.  
  
“That’s fine, that’s fine, we can just make one.”  
  


🧸  
  


“Can you forgive him?”  
  
Hinata Hajime brought his fingers to his cranium. If he pulled out the stitches from his skull, could he pull out his own brain. He felt the grooves left within his skin, the scars from Matsuda’s knife.  
  
“Forgive who?”  
  
“The person who made you this way.” 

Hinata Hajime’s hands.  
Kamukura Izuru’s hands.  
His nails dug into his skin as he tried to stop his skull from splitting.  
  
He wanted to talk to Komaeda. This person was not Komaeda. He looked like Komaeda, he rambled on in the same way, he looked at people with the same fear in his eyes. He had the same thin, and frail body. He had the same weak existence that looked like it could be knocked over by a small breeze. He was fragile in the same way.  
  
He was not Komada. He wanted to talk to Komaeda. It was frustrating. It felt like pulling teeth. He wanted to rip his hair out. No matter how hard he argued with Komaeda, Komaeda never gave him what he wanted. No matter how hard he tried to put a word to his feelings for Komaeda, those feelings refused to conform to any shape. He could not even describe the appearance of the one he loved so much.  
  
That shapeless person. That boy who danced like a ghost.  
His heart floated.  
  
This person was not Komaeda. He hated Ikkun for not being Komaeda. Ikkun was a stranger. No matter who he met, he would be a stranger. 

He didn’t know what the difference between them was.  
Love, maybe?  
Komaeda was still the shape of someone who wanted to be loved.  
Ikkun could go without.  
  
Ikkun was empty. Ikkun was Hinata Hajime.  
  
“In other words the person who broke you.”  
  
“I wasn’t broke, I was fixed.” Hinata said.  
The narrative running in his head was beginning to get a little bit unclear. He was in the same room where Matsuda had shattered the piled up televisions. He was talking to Ikkun, but Ikkun was… not there. He could hear the sound of his breathing, but he was not convinced he was really talking to another person.  
  
“You remind me of her.” Ikkun said, as he stood up and slowly closed the distance between them. “I had a girl I liked. Even though I liked her, I couldn’t stop myself from doing something horrible to her. Something that crosses every line. That can never be forgiven.” 

“Your story is-”  
  
“Boring. Yeah, I know. You think you’d get bored of that word already.” Ikkun shrugged, as he straightened his back finally and stood up looking at Kamukura directly in his mismatched eyes. “I bet that guy felt the same. He liked Hinata Hajime, so he fractured his skull in a way that couldn’t be repaired.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Then, you did the same to the one you liked.”  
  
“I didn’t…”  
  
“People just mindlessly repeat the same thing over and over again. No wonder you’re so bored.”  
  
“I didn’t kill Komaeda.”

Hinata’s awareness was fleeing from him.  
He looked at his hands. Ten fingers. He wrapped all ten around Ikkun’s neck. The heads of dolls popped off so easily, you just had to remove the ball from the joint. His hands were sticky and gross. He felt like he might melt.  
  
The moment he handed Komaeda over to that death game it was as good as killing Komaeda with his own hands. All because he could not bear to lose him. 

Iikun did not struggle against him at all. He almost seemed happy. Even when he was being strangled, Ikkun’s face did not change. Komaeda would have laughed. 

Matsuda finally broke through the door. He must have heard the noise. Maybe he had been pounding on it before this point but Kamukura could not hear him. Noises no longer reached his ears. All he heard was the static of the broken televisions playing on endless repeat around him. 

“Can we go five minutes without killing each other? I swear to god just once I want to be stuck in a death game with a bunch of normal people.”  
  
Matsuda said, as he pulled Kamukura off of Ikkun. He quickly inspected Ikkun’s neck for a moment, making sure the boy in front of him could still breathe. He thought about putting a hand on Ikkun’s shoulder but he was averse to touching him.  
  
“I can’t believe I’ve gotta lecture you all like goddamn five year olds. What did you do?”  
  
Ikkun just shrugged again. “We were just talking.”  
  
“Really, because you don’t look too surprised at being strangled. I mean I’m not surprised either, but that’s because nobody around here is goddamn normal.”  
  
“I’m used to this kind of thing happening to me.” He touched his neck with both hands, like he wanted to agitate the injury. _I’m used to this._ Matsuda saw Kumagawa. But Ikkun did not smile. “It’s normal not to react to what you’re used to, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah, whatever, Traumatized kid we get it. You can cry about it later.” Matsuda said as he started to hurrieldy push Ikkun out of the room.  
  
“I don’t cry,” Ikkun said.  
  
“I get it, you don’t feel things the way other people do. You can’t be happy or sad. You’re broken.”  
  
“Jeez, am I that predictable?” Ikkun was staring to wonder about the people that Matsuda spent all his time around.  
  
Before he could hear an answer, the door slammed in front of his face. He was sure Matsuda and Kamukura would have a lot to talk about in there. He hoped he would have fun. 

“You did that on purpose didn’t you?” A small voice asked him. It belonged to none other than Shiranui Hansode, who sat in one of the broken hospital window. It would be odd to see her appearing out of nowhere like that, but as a ninja it was kind of her thing.  
  
Not that Ikkun looked the least bit surprised to see her. “I don’t do anything on purpose. I’m way too clumsy.”  
  
“You’ve been pushing their buttons.”  
  
“I don’t know what other people’s buttons even are. If I’m pushing buttons then I’m like a cat stepping on a keyboard.” Ikkun said, trying to shirk her off.  
“Then what are you doing?”  
  
“Standing here, you know… just existing. Maybe.”  
  
“What are you trying to do?”  
  
“I’ll have to think about that question for awhile. There’s a lot of deeper philosophical implications.”  
  
“Boy. you’re fun to talk to. You must have a lot of friends.” Shiranui said, kicking her legs in the windowsill. She looked just like a child losing her patience.  
  
“This is just what happens. Everything around me goes insane. Strategies, calculations, everything.He had such an analytical gaze, he must have wanted to tear out his own eyes looking at me.”  
  
“Because you’re so ugly, right?”  
  
“That’s mean to say. I’m at least average.”  
  
“You’re way below average. Try harder.”  
  
“But, I don’t want to.”  
  
Ikkun did not seem particularly bothered by this. He just did not feel anything. He was just there.  
  
“It’s not like I wanted this to happen, y’know? But, nothing goes the way I want again. Awe well.”  
  
He did not seem too disappointed either.  
Disappointment meant having expectations in the first place, and expectations bothered him. They were a weight he could not carry. He was struggling to stay afloat just with himself. He was happy just to tread water. He thought that was living. 

Shiranui smiled.  
Ikkun did not smile.  
  
“I guess that’s why you got invited to this game. Are you having fun?”  
  
“I never have fun.”  
  
Awe.  
That makes me sad. Games are fun because they can be played by everyone together. Especially now that the boss fight is about to start.  
  
🧸

 

Shuuji’s face appeared on every TV screen in the city at the same time, except for the ones that had been broken.  
  
His styled hair, his clear skin, his clean white suit. He was the exact opposite of Takumi who looked like used gum someone had scraped off the floor. And unlike gloomy Takumi, he smiled so pleasantly.  
  
“You’re all so useless! Innocent people are getting murdered in the streets and you’re too self-obsessed with your own problems to do a thing about it.”  
  
The frame camera slowly zoomed out to show Takumi standing in front of Sakakura Juzo, who was tied up.  
  
“Don’t you think about anybody besides yourself? Learn to read the room already! Pay attention to the people around you. Be proper, proper.”  
  
Even though he was talking about heroes, he looked like a common petty crook shoved into a suit. He was no different fro the well-dressed Yakuza. He unfolded his knife again, and played with it like a shiny new toys before bringing it up to Juzo’s neck.  
  
“Turn over Yukizome Chisa, or he’ll die. That’s an order from the game master for this week. If you want to stop me from killing him all you have to do is kill me. That’s the way you deal with a murderer. That’s how you stop a villain.”  
  
He had already prepared a stage just for them. It was the villain who did all the work, all the hero really needed to do was show up.  
  
“He does realize that nobody can understand him, right?” Zerozaki said, when all four of them were watching. “Why don’t people just say what they mean, what’s with all this nonsense.”  
  
“Some people really need to learn how to talk to others…” Takumi muttered to himself.  
  
“Don’t lecture other people about that! You’re a remedial student in that class!” Zerozaki snapped back at him.  
  
The three serial killers really needed to stop acting like the three stooges. It was Kei who took the lead, as he was the only one of all three of them who had any common sense and the ability to think ahead of time. A rare and dangerous ability. 

He led all three of the children following behind him to the abandoned hospital to find Medaka. All the while Shuuji’s irritating face continued to be broadcast on every television around them.  
  
When he found Medaka she was hiding in the furthest corner of the hospital. For a moment Takumi thought that she was a ghost playing hide and go seek and he was going to die in a few days. That was just the poor lightning of the area he was standing in. They really needed to find a less creepy place to stay at.  
  
“Kurokami-san, why are you hiding?”  
  
“Don’t wanna…”  
  
“Don’t wanna what? What are you a kid? All of you are seriously starting to make me feel like an old man.”  
  
It was so hard being the responsible one.  
  
Kurokami Medaka, the girl who always did her best, who never gave up, who never ran away, that girl was long gone. The lioness was curled up in the corner and shivering. She was such a strong girl. Munakata always believed that. He thought she could handle anything because she was a strong person.  
  
Since, when did she start looking so small?

“If I fight, I’ll kill someone again.” Medaka’s expression was half broken. One of her eyes was sewn shut. Her lips trembled, as if she was unsure whether to smile or frown. She was scared, and also she was loving this.  
  
Medaka held her face in her hands. “Hey, hey…” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and yet it was loud enough to break Kei’s eardrums. That girl. The girl he thought ignored Zenkichi. The girl he thought was strong. She was only strong because she did not know how to be weak. “Am I Kurokami Medaka right now…?”  
  
His mother was loving but strict. She always told him not to bully girls. It was because his mother was so strict he always held himself back from killing. _I might disappoint my family._ That was enough of a reason to stop himself.  
  
It was a normal reason. Despite being born with the instinct to kill, Munakata did not consider himself anybody special. If he was not born this way, he would be a guy you could find anywhere just like Zenkichi. That’s why he liked being around that guy. He felt like himself when he was around Zenkichi. 

“Or am I Enoshima Junko?”  
  
“Clearly you are Kurokami Medaka, her hair is blonde.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant!”  
  
“Then you should say what you mean.”  
  
“I hit someone and they didn’t even fight back. And it didn’t feel like I was the one doing it.”  
  
“Did you hit Zerozaki?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Then, you’re the one who hit him. I don’t see why you’re so confused.” 

Kei was far too straightforward to help with her confusion. He knelt down so the two of them were on the same level. Munakata also, did not want to feel like a murderer. Even though all he ever thought about was ways to kill people.  
  
“I can’t stop myself from killing someone again. I can’t control these thoughts in my head. I want to stop thinking-”  
  
“It’s not your fault.”  
  
Kumagawa’s words.  
  
Munakata continued, “You copied my abnormality. You’re far too impressionable.”  
  
“No, I didn’t. Closing my eyes worked. I don’t feel an obsessive urge to kill anyone. My Medaka brain isn’t thinking about things like that..” Medaka said. It was weird to see her so up front about her own feelings. He was not used to her talking about him like he was a person. “I was angry at Nanami in that moment, that’s all, that’s the only reason I…” 

She killed Nanami. Medaka was filled with disgust because she did not believe she would ever want to kill another person. She thought she was too good. At the end of the day, medaka always assumed she was better than others.

A princess always stays kind. 

If she ever does anything unkind then she’s not Medaka anymore.  
Then she had to be Enoshima Junko, but…  
  
“Then you killed someone.That’s normal.”  
  
“No it’s not.”  
  
“Well, it’s normal for me. I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s not like you hurt anybody.”  
  
“A person is dead.”  
  
“Oh, right.” 

If Zenkichi were here, what would he do? He would just smile at Medaka like everything was normal. Kei had no idea how to smile. He tried to make it work with his lips, and he could feel the cobwebs in his facial muscles tear as those muscles creaked with the effort. 

He gave up on that.  
Let’s be serious now. 

“Hitoyoshi-kun… wouldn’t want you to hate yourself.”  
  
“Why do you care? You said we’re not friends.”  
  
Medaka was a teenaged girl after all. It must have been difficult going through her adolescence suddenly like this. 

“But, I should have treated my friend’s important person better. I was not acting as a good friend." 

Munakata was strict. Disciplined. He was merely acting like the adult. He did not believe himself to be a good person. His fingers tightened around his sword. It would be so easy, to let it free and cut the chains in front of him.  
  
He was not going to see his parents again. What did they care what had happened to their no-good son? There was no one waiting for him at home. It would be so easy to just give in.  He could already see how it would go, if he finished Medaka in one blow she would die. Her head would roll off. Sonia most likely felt protective of her, and would retaliate. She would be the most formiddable because of how well trained she was. She fought more like a soldier than a princess. All he needed to do was take advantage of the boy who was already injured who wanted to protect her.  
  
Sonia, and Gundham would die. How many bodies was that? Three? Matsuda would be easy to kill as well. The only troubling one still in the hospital was Emukae. He had never tried to kill someone who was already dead before. He wondered how many pieces he would need to cut her in before she stopped moving. Kamukura was the only one he saw as capable of stopping him. He should wait to kill Matsuda last until he was right in front of Kamukura. 

He would die in a blood bath. Kamukura would reduce his body to pulp. There would be no trace of a living person left. Munakata was a normal boy. He was tempted by sweet things like most children. He just happened to think blood tasted sweeter than candy. If he just gave up then he could be free of always struggling with these feelings.  
  
If he was flawed in some other way he could at least work on that flaw.  
But he was born like this.  
  
If people like him did not exist in the world. So many more people would still be alive right now. Takumi’s middle school class would still be there, and he would just be a normal boy with some social anxiety. He would spend every day going to school with his best friend.  
  
He thought of Zenkichi.

And of sunflowers. 

_If I had met you in a different life. I wonder how well things would’ve gone._

He loved Zenkichi, but the moment he realized he loved him he gave up on that love. He did not fight. Not because he thought that Zenkichi would never love anybody but Medaka, but because he knew he was not good enough. 

 _No, it’s impossible for me._ _  
__I need a different body. I need a different life._ _  
__The me who only thinks about killing people needs to disappear._ _  
__As long as I’m like this, I’m afraid of being next to you._  
  
He had dreamed about it many times. Being born into a different life.  
A life where he could tell Hitoyoshi Zenkichi that he loved him.  
  
The thought of never seeing his parents again, or his little sister made him a little sad, but that family probably never wanted him to return home.He was happy he met Zenkichi. That boy showed him a happy dream, for a little while he got to pretend to be a normal boy.  
  
He had given up on living for his own happiness. He wondered if he could make somebody else happy, did that mean he wasn't born entirely wrong? He only thought of killing. Since when did he spend so much time thinking about other people? 

He thought of what he would see after he finally closed his eyes for the last time. He pictured it like a spring day. He was walking forward on a dirty road. At the place where the son met the horizon the boy was waiting for him. He could hear his footsteps in the dirt as he started to run, and his own heartbeat quickening. He had no idea what face he was making, but all of the blood in his body was being redirected to his cheeks. He had no idea if this is what being alive meant, but he was warm. That world was an impressionist painting in hazy colors. It was colored in with feelings he did not understand.   
  
He looked and saw a hand. He slowly closed his own around it. The hand was calloused, and bigger than his own. Their hands looked so clusmy trying to fit together. No matter how hard he tried he could no longer remmeber the faces of what his parents looked like, but he saw every small detail of that hand, felt Zenkichi's skin against his own like sandpaper. It was rough, but it was pleasant.   
  
He stopped dreaming and held that same hand out to Medaka. 

“Kurokami-san, I won’t let you kill anyone.” 

He said, as he let go of the sword handle at the hilt of his belt.  
  
“I won’t let you become like me.” 

“Are those two done yet?” Zerozaki interrupted.  
  
“Quit being so insensitive? What kind of person just talks and talks like that? You have to learn to read the room and pause at appropriate times in conversation. People who just keep talking are really only interested in themselves…” Takumi continued to mutter.  
  
“Why do people keep saying things and expecting me to listen? I only listen to the words of god.” Angie said.  
  
Zerozaki leaned against her to get her attention. “We’re going to a fun place. There will be lots of candy and sweets, yeah whatever I can’t think of a good lie. I’m not a smooth talker. Just stay in la la land for a little bit longer.” He fussed over her in his own way.  
  
“Don’t end up like us…” Takumi muttered in his usual gloom.  
  
“Hah! She couldn’t be as cool as us even if she tried,” Zerozaki looked like he wanted to riot.

“There’s no candy here, you liar. There’s just a very sad looking girl. Can we eat her instead?” Angie asked not paying attention.  
  
“All I’ve ever wanted was to live a normal life. Have normal friends, go to a normal school, a life where I could sleep through the days I’m so bored.”  
  
Kurokami Medaka sighed.  
  
“So, how do I end up attracting so many weirdoes?” 

“Well that’s cuz you’re the biggest weirdo of them all!” 

Kurokami Medaka laughed.  
Kurokami Medaka rioted. Whether she laughed or cried, whether she was peaceful, or she rioted, she was always herself.   
  
She just needed to remember the lonely girl in the mirror. 


	52. Who's the Fairest of them All

Boss fight time!  
Let’s look at the adventuring part we have a hero (Medaka), a murderer (Kei), a murderer (Zerozaki) and a murderer (Takumi).  
  
What an unbalanced party!  
  
You know, Medaka herself is not much of a leader. She’s no more than just a symbol that other people rally around. Kind of like how in most rpgs, the main player character is just a silent, personality-less void that everybody in the party loves. What’s important isn’t the personality of the main character, what is important is that everyone in the party focuses around them. 

I really do love games, but it must be sad to be a silent player character like that, unable to say anything, unable to scream, but loved by everybody else in the party all the same. Does anybody seriously think that they can be the main characters of their own lives? Do people really think that way? I love games as much as the next person, but that's just losing your grip on reality. You need to stay in reality if you want to learn to get along with other people. There can only be one main character, thinking that way getsi in the way of cooperation. 

Oh wait I was getting distracted talking about video games again. Sorry, short attention span. The place Shuuji told them to meet was the abandoned school building. The moment they stepped in the halls, Medaka saw Shiranui in the distance.  
  
She wanted to run after her, but she was afraid. She was afraid she might kill the girl who she called her friend, who had something to do with her family’s murder. Munakata Kei held her back by the arm, and then silently reassured her that he would go after her.  
  
At that point Zerozaki noticed that Angie had gone missing, and yelled he would be right back as he ran off to look for her.  
  
Medaka tried to keep the party from splitting up, but when they reached the stairway just by the lockers, Shuuji suddenly appeared and attacked Takumi. Takumi told her to run off ahead, and then rambled  about five other unrelated things in the space of ten seconds.

Medaka ran up the stairs alone, but when she was alone she increasingly doubted herself.  
  
When she got to the classroom, Munakata was waiting for her there.  
  
What did he want? Did he still think she was the one who killled her family? Those questions occurred to her, but she did not really have space in her head to think about it right now. Her overclocked brain was running several super computer’s worth of processing information, but it was funny she could not think. She never understood people’s feelings, but in that moment it was like she could see them. 

Her red. Her rage.  
And Munakata, a cold, dead, blue.

She could see the rage tracing red pathways down her arm like it was theblood in her veins,all the way up to her fingers, all the way up to her ears and she could hear loudly the blood pouring into empty arteries in her head. 

She rushed forward and pounded against him. If she made enough noise with her fists she could ignore her own thoughts. Munakata dodged her blows. He took a boxing stance just like that of his best friend.  
  
Float like a strange chimera butterfly scorpion that had been sewn together.  
Wait, that was probably not how that saying went.  
  
Either way Munakata was far lighter on his feet than she was, and Medaka’s speed was limited. She could not hit him besides a few glancing blows, it was so frustrating.  
  
What did she have to be angry about? Up until this point she had lived a privileged life. She had been spoiled by everyone around her. She heard nothing but praise. It was like eating candy everyday. And yet, as long as she could remember she had always been so angry.  
  
This anger inside of her stretched her internal organs like they were taffy, again and again to the breaking point, she saw the pink material that made up her insides bend and stretch. She wanted it to snap like a rubber band. If it would not snap, she would cut it loose with a blade. 

She grabbed the sword from Munakata’s belt, and drew it out herself stealing it away from him. She held it with both hands and swung it over her head. Munakata blocked her with the right side of his body, and she manged one of his arms.  
  
She was going to riot. Something terrible was going to happen. She had enough forethought left to process that. Her feelings, her sense of remorse, her own brain would only reboot after it was already over. Clang. Clang. Clang. She heard the clanging of the broken fan in her brain, desperately trying to stop her from overheating. 

She was just standing there in the classroom. She was trembling, but she was not the one who should be afraid. Munakata sat across from her, on top of the teacher’s desk. The rage was like an addictive drug. She had become convinced it was something she needed.  
  
“This rage that makes you want to destroy everything, all the people and things, burn everything to the ground. You need it.”  
  
Enoshima Junko said, from the corner of the ceiling she had crawled up to. 

 But Medaka, wanted to be kind.  
Why would a kind person ever need to be angry?

When Medaka hesitated, Munakata grabbed her wrist and twisted it until it broke over his knee to force her to drop the sword.  
  
He just kicked it away.  
He… He was not fighting her. He simply held onto her arm.  
  
“It hurts doesn’t it?”  
  
Munakata asked her.  
Ice.  
She was frozen.  
She stood in place.  
  
“I finally realized what despair is. It’s agony.” 

Munakata said, looking at the bandaged up, and barely breathing Sakakura Juzo. 

 

🦔

  
The moment he saw Takumi, Shuuji slammed his fist into the boy’s chest. Takumi fell forward and leaned against him while he was still standing. Shuuji twisted the blow putting everything into it until he heard one of Takumi’s ribs break. 

  
Takumi looked him in the eye. He leaned in until Shuuji was tickled by his breath. Then he splat blood on his face.  
  
“Filthy.”  
  
Shuuji pushed Takumi away from him. He reached into his pocket with gloved hands, and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the blood. Then he threw both the gloves and the handkerchief away. He bit his tongue to suppress the urge to vomit at the sight of blood.  
  
“Look at you, you’re slouching. Your shirt is way too wrinkled. That cheap suit clearly doesn’t fit you, I bet you just bought it off the rack without even trying it on. Your hair needs to be cut. Your shirt isn’t tucked in. You have to button it up all the way. The knot on your tie is way too loose.”  
  
“You’re making me feel bad about my appearance.”  
  
“Yes, that’s the point.” Shuuji clarified.  
  
“But besides the fact that I slouch, don’t iron my clothes, wear the same suit every day without washing it, don’t brush my hair, and don’t know how to tie a knot, you still think I’m cute, right?”  
  
“What about that is cute?”  
  
“It’s gap moe.”  
  
“WHere’s the gap? Is it in your head!?”  
  
For a moment the two of them joking around like that felt like they were back to their old selves. All he needed to do was see Shuuji in the mirror to be himself again. Takumi knew that was wrong, something had changed, or else Shuuji would not have followed him all the way here.  
  
“You can’t do anything proper, proper. No matter how much I lecture you.”  
  
Takumi threw a knife at the back of Munakata Kyosuke’s head, but Shuuji intercepted it with his own body. Takumi immediately felt remorse, as he saw the white jacket of Shuuji’s suit ruined with his red blood. Shuuji immediately panicked and threw the jacket off of him like he was afraid to touch the blood.  
  
“I bet Munakata-sensei is really important to you now…” Takumi said, as he grabbed one of the locker’s in the hallway. He pulled it open, and then slammed it shut. Again. Again. Bash. Bash. “Why do you like Munakata-sensei so much anyway? Honestly is he really worth protecting with your own body? I don’t understand it…”  
  
Takumi hit his head against the locker door while Shuuji watched. His dirty hair, was made even dirtier with his own blood. Then, in a fit of anger he pulled the locker door straight off of its hinges and threw it at Shuuji. “You came here to see me, didn’t you? Stop being with him, and be with me.” 

Shuuji just deflected it and knocked it down to the floor. Takumi stepped on it, again, again, until the metal of the locker door started to bend further. “Ugh, I lost control out of jealousy. I’m going to look like a stalker at this rate. Just because I never sleep, I spend all hours of the day obsessively thinking about one person, and I have no sense of personal boundaries doesn’t make me a stalker okay?”  
  
Shuuji said nothing.  
  
“Hey, it was just a joke. I’m just pretending to have no social skills as a joke. If I’m annoying you on purpose then it’s less cringey.”  
  
Shuuji said nothing. 

Rattle, rattle. The sound of chains. The sound of a boy trapped in a locker. He hid in a locker while Ikusaba Mukuro killed his classmates. His classmates died, and he died in that locker. He would never be able to fully get back to normal. Upon seeing how easily people were cut free from their chains, how easily they could die, he stopped being able to brush away homicidal urges which were now simmering to the point of boiling over. He could go mad at any moment. There was a part of him that wanted to go mad.  
  
Madness. His senses shredding away. That was preferable to the locker, dark, he could not see, he could not hear. He knew he was past the point of being unable to contain those urges. He was poisoned by an assassin. But it didn’t kill him. It made him into a poisonous creature. He was like a worm that had adapted and suddenly become a snake. He felt it far past the level of sexual desire, it was the same uncontrollable feeling of falling suddenly head over heels in love.  
  
He could either kill or go mad.  
It could only be one or the other.  
  
He picked up a knife, and started to hack wildly at these chains. He kicked on the door of his locker.  
  
He became the killer killer.  
Then he noticed.  
He couldn’t hear the sound of chains anymore. At this moment there were no chains pulling him and Shuuji forward. There never were any.  
  
“I don’t know why you’re mad at me, but why don’t you just forget it and be friends with me again?”  
  
Shuuji said nothing.  
  
“We can be the killer killer together. We can only kill bad people. If that’s what will make you happy.”  
  
Shuuji said nothing.  
  
“This time I won’t run from you. I’m always thinking… I’m always thinking of ways I can be together with you.” 

The two of them were standing in the hallway of an abandoned classroom. Desks were toppled over. The windows were broken. The lockers were all left empty.  
  
Shuuji pulled out a knife from the inside of his jacket. “The perfect killer.”  
  
“Hah?”  
  
“You’ve killed fifty three people so far. The first two being your own parents. The rest were all murderers, you solved their crimes before the police could, hunted them down, and killed them with the exact same murder methods.”  
  
“Shuuji-kun?”  
  
“There was so much love in those murders.”  
  
“Oi, listen. I know I’m not good at talking but that’s not what I was talking about-” 

“You only love murder, Hijrihara-kun so just shut up already.”  
  
“Hey, hey, I’m saying words here-”  
  
“You’re not my friend. You’re just a killer.”  
  
Shuuji and Takumi both drew knives at the same insant. They crossed the space between them and hit blade to blade. Every single slash was perfectly matched as they read each other’s opponents.  
  
Takumi spotted a hole in Shuuji’s defense. He was so angry. He was so angry he was not Shuuji’s friend anymore. Was this what being dumped was like? Nothing could stop him. He slashed at Shuuji’s carotid artery.  
  
Blood gushed out.  
Red flowers bloomed forth, they were so pleasing to the eye, it brought him somewhere else entirely. He was in shangri-la. He had already gone to the afterlife. The matter was already decided. He would kill Shuuji.  
  
Then he noticed.  
He hadn’t been able to slit Shuuji’s throat after all.  
He had stopped himself just before. Even though the only person he wanted to kill was Shuuji.  
Even though he only cared about killing. He did not kill. He could not kill.  
  
Shuuji had no stopped himself from digging the knife right into his ribs Takumi understood. He was covered in his own blood. He fell forward, but this time Shuuji did not catch him. He felt the cold floor greet him. 

This wasn’t as romantic as he thought it would be.  
Getting killed by Shuuji was not as fun as he thought it would be.  
He wanted to play with Shuuji more. He wanted his friend.

His hand hurt. He was holding onto something tightly. Tighter than rigor mortis. His fingers were curled around something and would not let go. What was he holding?  
He wanted to take Shuuji’s hand.  
But the only thing in his hand was a knife.  
  


 

🦔

 

Kei had run after Shiranui, but by the time he thought he had found her he lost her again. He stopped in the center of what looked to be an old A/V room. There were screens everywhere. He heard footsteps behind him.  
  
“It’s too quiet, so I’ll kill you. You’re way too loud, so I’ll kill you.”  
  
Kei said as he quickly drew his sword from his sheath and cut through the air. Standing there was none other than Ikkun, who did not look the least bit surprised to see a sword pointing at his neck. 

"Am I being too quiet, or too loud? Make up your mind." Ikkun snapped back. 

“What are you doing here?"

Ikkun shrugged noncommittally. 

“You have to know something. You didn’t just fall on your ass and end up in a killing game," Munakata felt a little bit frustrated dealing with the evasive boy. 

“It’s definitely something that could happen with my luck. Not that luck is a thing that matters.”  
  
“What are you mumbling about? Speak more clearly.”  
  
“I’m just being self deprecating. It’s one of the things that makes me relatable and lovable.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No, it makes me unrelatable and hatable.” Ikkun said, as he leaned in letting the tip of the sword kiss his neck. “Actually, I came to this city hoping that someone might kill me. Even with all of these murderers running around, I still haven’t died. I’m an unpopular guy, huh?”  
  
“Don’t think that way. Be more positive.”  
  
“That was a joke. Actually, I don’t think anybody could feel strongly enough to hate me. I’m just plain unlikable.” 

  
“Do you always just keep talking to yourself like this?”  
  
“Yeah, a little bit.” 

Laughter.  
Behind them, a girl was laughing. Shiranui waved at the both of them. “You can’t just expect someone to kill you Ikkun, don’t be lazy.”  
  
“It benefits him too. I see the command on that bangle of yours.”  
  
 **Munakata Kei.** **  
****> Cannot go four rounds without killing someone. ** **  
****  
**“It’s different if you have a willing victim, right? My death won’t result in anything. It won’t be hope or despair. The world will just go on.”

His knife cutting through the flesh. Slowly peeling the skin off. Cutting the meat underneath with a saw. He could cut off the limbs in order to hide the body so that no one would ever know. He could bury Ikkun where no one would ever find him.  
  
Munakata reached for Ikkun’s neck, and then stabbed a knife into his own hand to stop himself.

“Hey, why are you holding back? Is there someone you’ve always wanted to kill?” 

“No, I promised my friend…”  
  
“Oh, you’re doing this because of a friend. You must be such a good person. But, what kind of good person would think about killing other people?”  
  
Ikkun asked.  
Just curious.  
  
"You kept going on, and on about how you'd be responsible for other people's actions. But, you can't be responsible for anybody else but yourself. No, you can't even be responsibile for yourself."   
  
At that moment every monitor in the room turned on at once. Ikkun and Shiranui both looked equally confused as to what was going on. Suddenly, live video feed from the killing games turned on.  
  
Zenkichi’s face appeared. Kei felt like he was being surrounded by an entire crowd of Zenkichi’s. They were all lokoing at him from every angle. He was completely naked in front of those eyes.  
  
Zenkichi brought his foot down hard on Kumagawa. He stomped like he was trying to break him.  
  
Kumagawa asked him. “Hey, Zenkichi-chan. If things were different, do you think we could have been friends?” 

“We could never be friends.”  
  
“Awe, why not.”  
  
“I don’t want to be friends with someone who only hurts others.” 

Munakata remembered. Zenkichi’s voice. _Do you really want to be friends with a killer?_ **_Stupid. We’re already friends._ **The house he lived alone at for thirteen years. The police officer who occasionally watched over him. Her eyes filled with fear. She did not look at him like he was a child. His old house, mother, father. When his sister was born he stood over his sister’s crib every single night with a fork in his hand. He wanted to jab it into her eye. 

Did his sister grow up? Did she make friends? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she have a girlfriend? Did she ever cry alone? Did she wish she had a big brother to protect her? Did she even remember him? Did she hate the person who had taken her eye? Did she remember to always be kind to others just like mother taught them? 

 _Monokuma had a gloomy sunday._ The words appeared on the back of his eyeballs. _Hey kiddos, here’s a lesson from your old pal Monokuma. I think giving up is really important._ He was standing in front of his childhood home. It was a traditional japanese house, with wooden walls, a paper door, a fusuma that slid open, and tatami mats. The door slid open in front of him. _If you don’t give up on your dreams, they’ll come true. That’s just irresponsible and lazy encouragement._ His mother, his father, his big sister were there exactly as he left him.  
  
He never thought they would miss him. He never thought they would look so happy to see him. His sister ran up and threw her arms around him. How much of their lives had he missed running away from them? His mother patted him on the head. It was hard wasn’t it. He asked them if they hated him. His mother said what kind of mother could hate her own son. His father laughed and called him too sensitive just like his mother. _Persistence is just the worst. That’s why giving up is so important._  
  
His mother and father said they were excited to meet his new friend. A hand on his shoulder. He looked behind him and Zenkichi was there next to him.

"So who are you going to kill before the fourth round?" Ikkun asked, breaking through his daydream. 

“Hitoyoshi-kun, let’s go home.” 

That boy said he had been waiting his whole life to kill just one person, that was why he held himself back. Munakata understood now. He had the blood of a killer. He had the blood of a killing family traveling around in his veins. He needed to bleed this blood away. 

The person he wanted to kill.  
The person he wanted to kill was...

Himself.

He had always wanted to murder Munakata Kei.

A sword slid into his stomach.

The heads of his mother,  father,  and sister rolled off like they were dolls. He saw black and white mixing together,  and then he saw nothing.  Color drained from his world like blood from a gaping wound.  

Munakata Kei collapsed.

Like an old stone statue, he broke apart and toppled over. 

Ikkun tilted his head to the side in confusion. Then he slowly turned to watch the screens, as the image changed again. There was a white haired boy looking back at him, he was talking to an average looking boy with brown hair. 

“First the good luck, and then the bad.” 

The boy on the television screen who looked like him with all the colors washed out said so.  
  
“That’s a riot. This is the first time I’ve felt like laughing out loud.”  
  
Ikkun said.  
He did not laugh. 

Shiranui clicked her tongue as if to lecture him. “Wow? Making fun of Komaeda? Pointing out that he’s a little weird? You’re the first person to do that ever. You’re an original.”  
  
“No, I’m a knockoff”  
  
“Exactly.” 

“I’m not making fun of the guy. I’m jealous.” Ikkun placed his palm flat on the television screen as if to caress the boy’s cheek. He wanted to hold that boy’s face in his hand, like he was his precious someone. “I wish I could be that deluded.” 

There was no beautiful dream, delusion, or mirage waiting for him. There was no mist, and nothing on the other side.There was only water. Water crashed into him in a violent downpour of rain. Water that leaked through his pores, and inside of his memories through the process of osmosis.  
  
Head under water. He had a flashback. First, his family. Little sister, Big Sister, Father, Mother. Uncle and aunt on both sides. Memories of his childhood. He could not recall the face of a single friend. He did not have any. No one knew him. 

He was born to a terribly plain household. It was in… Kobe. He was pretty sure they were still alive. His father was a drunkard. No, that was just a lie. He didn’t remember the face of his father well, also a lie. His parents owned some land. He got lost one day and nobody came looking for him. It was cold. The house was a two story building, and it even had a basement. His room was in the basement. They lived in that house as a family of ten. His sister was two years younger. Even though she was two years younger everyone said they looked like twins. Same brown hair, same yellow eyes, same thin body, her hair was just a little longer. She was a bookworm who never went outside. Her mother wasn’t the same as his. She never smiled at him, not once. The household had two mothers. His first mother died right in front of him. No, that was a lie she divorced and tried to take the kids. Another lie, she just left one day. Was that a lie, he couldn’t remember. All he had was a vague recollection of driving with her. _My dad and her mom, each with no relation to one another got married._ A patchwork household. A patchwork child. 

Mother told him to go to the basement. A staircase in front of him. He had to go down the stairs to get to the basement.Two hands pushed him from behind. Haha. Kids always said that they fell down the stairs as an excuse for when they were being beaten. Nobody believed him. Ifhe had really fallen down the stairs would someone believe him? He fell down the stairs two, three times, and crashed into the landing. There was a few scratches on his body as he stood up, but he did not hurt or itch.  
  
He wasn’t in the basement. Where as he? Tar underneath his feet. He walked home from school with shoes that had holes in them. He didn’t want to ask for a new pair. He walked home from school alone every day. That was normal. A lot of kids were like him. He made his own lunch. He only ate half. He saved the other half for a stray dog. On the way home from school he fed him. He played with that dog. An excuse not to go home. The soles of his shoes were sticky. The alleyway was painted red. Meat left out of the refrigerator past its expiration date smelled like this. 

The dog’s upper jaw was broken and bent back in an l-shape to its lower jaw, and with the jaw cracked open the dog’s own intestines were hanging out from his mouth stuffed there like it fed on its own organs. Its eyeballs had been popped out of their sockets, and they were pulled out to the limit without the cord that connects the eye to the brain being severed. 

No, no, no, that was a lie. He wasn’t standing in the middle of an alleyway. He stood on a runway. A plane came falling down from the sky. He stood in the exact centerof the run way waiting to be run over. Miss. The plane crashes right behind him. Not a single shrapnel hits him. The plane breaks in half on impact. The nose tips up and looks like a ship sinking into the concrete.  
  
He stepped forward to see a face that looked so much like his own. It was just a face. Her head was not attached to anything else. Perfectly severed at the neck. Accident. Crumbling. Plane. _My little sister._ She disappeared around that time. _Father and I were the only ones at the funeral. Goodbye._

And then. Kumagawa Tomo. Kunagisa Nao.  Money from the Kunagisa organization. An apology for taking your sister. Sister was worth this much, huh? Everyone at that household forgot about her. That household lived comfortably without her. She would go out every day and play with stray cats. He wanted to show her the dog he had found. 

A pile of overflowing trash. He left his household and slept there for the night. He saw an old robot with a key still in the back, one of its eyes broken. There was food that was still edible thrown out by a grocer. Old magazines. A bike with a missing wheel. Broken appliances. An umbrella with holes in it. Damaged Goods. 

He took a step forward and tripped over a corpse. A severed arm reaching forward. A rib poking out. A leg twisted in the wrong direction. A hole in the leg and a broken femur bone. Broken bodies kept piling up around him. It was raining. They fell, and were all lying cold upon the concrete. 

The corpses’ heads all turned at once.  
The eyes of those heads.  
Opened wide with the sound of tearing flesh.  
  
 _These are._ _  
__These are the people I’ve killed._ _  
__These are._ _  
__The bodies of the people whose deaths I’m responsible for._  
Staggering.  
His body sways.  
Shaking.  
The broken limbs around him sway.  
Must be the wind. The wind blows for him. To move him forward.  
  
That’s just a pretty delusion.  
The wind blows for no one.  
They died because they died.  
Dead people are dead.  
In the end, dead people are dead.  
Just like other people are, in the end, others.  
  
He thought that, and began to walk forward. He wanted to look at a pretty delusion too, but his eyes had grown tired from seeing.  
  
A school building before him. A test with one hundred questions. _They let me in even though I got the wrong answer._ He told them not to let him in. Sensei insisted. The teachers were all so pushy. Er3 system. _The classmates I did not get along with. The classmates I did get along with. Omokage Magokoro._ He reached out to touch her. Then, from their contact, a spark, and then spontaneous combustion. He was not meant to touch other people. There would be fire. He watched her whole body get covered in flames and burn away in front of him. He reached out for her hand, his fingers closed around ash just as it blew away. There was nothing left of her. They called him in to identify her corpse. He shrugged and said he did not know. They asked him if they were even friends. _Of course we were friends._ You don’t look sad. 

He could not remember. He could not remember that school. If he could his head would explode. He stood on the school grounds. Somewhere on this campus the corpse of his friend was buried. 

He stood in front of the school. On the grass a corpse was buried under. Two hands came from the ground, and grabbed his feet. The nails that dug into him were painted a bright blue.

That girl’s nails dug into his skin. She pulled on him. Ikkun gasped. One of the bodies he had walked by had grabbed his foot.  He had to remember to breathe. The person holding onto his foot in front of him was real.  
  
“P...please… Please kill me now. Bleeding to death is...”  
  
Munakata Kei spoke like his throat was a strand of yarn stretched until it tore, in a sentence together muddled from tears and weeping. 

“Not my business die yourself.” 

He replied and didn’t look back.  
He had no desire to.  
He did not think.  
He did not think at all.  
He only stepped over another body to continue walking down the path. One more dead body he was carrying,  but that was fire, he would get used to the weight of lugging it around eventually. 

"You're a cold one aren't ya, talking someone into suicide like that. " Shiranui said. 

“I didn’t kill him. I  just didn’t do anything.” Ikkun defended himself. "It's not like I wanted that to happen."

 _I’m not a killer._ _  
__I didn’t kill him._ _  
__I’m just a passive bystander._

 

**[END]**

**[Munakata Kei - GAME OVER]**


	53. INTERMISSION ONE

Where were we?   
The last thing I remember, Matsuda and Kamukura were fighting and Matsuda locked the door and told Ikkun to get out of the way, right? 

Kamukura Izuru lay on the floor. The sheets had been torn off the bed, the mattress overturned, everything that had been on the shelves was knocked onto the floor, the glass windows were shattered when Matsuda pushed the other boy’s head through them, the iv stand had been knocked over, wires that had been ripped out of the wall were crisscrossing on the floor. Plaster had broken off the walls and were lying on chunks in the floor, along with a thin white powder.    


The hospital room had been completely ruined by Matsuda and Kamukura’s fight. It somehow looked even more like the set of an abandoned hospital room one might use for a horror movie than it had before.    
  
Kamukura’s short black hair fell in a mess over his face, covering his sleeping eyes. He lied on his side. He looked still as death, and only the slow rising and falling of his chest signalled he was alive. His shirt, as well as hie jacket had both been torn off and Matsuda could see the scars on the ashen skin of his upper body. He looked like a corpse that had been autopsied. They were all over his torso, like individual stitch marks of a doll that had been mended many times. 

 

Kamukura Izuru slept because of a syringe that stuck out of his leg. Matsuda after catching his breath, wrapped his fingers around it and unstuck it from Kamukura’s thigh. 

 

“How have I not had my medical license revoked already? Oh that’s right, this world is completely fucked.” 

 

Mastuda whinged to himself as he went back to sit on the empty metal frame of the bed.    
  
“I’m not even the worst doctor I know. There are doctors that are worse than me. Can you belive that?” 

 

He tilted his head down. Dark, shaggy hair fell over lonesome eyes. He frowned at his shadow, and saw Kumagawa smiling back at him.    
  


_ I finally understood why I thought you were interesting. _ _  
_ _ You’re like the exact opposite of me. _

_ You always get involved with other people.  _ _  
_ _ You’d even risk your own life and continue to endure suffering to the point of madness…  _

 

All Matsuda wanted was to live for the sake of someone else.   
But no matter what he did.    
Even with his monster.   
Even with his childhood friend.   
He had nothing to do with other people.    
  
_ I’m envious of you.  _   
  
“What should I do now…?”   
  
“I really feel like talking with you right now, Kumagawa… I wonder why…”   
  
“Can I… can I talk to you?”    
  
“No.”   
  
Another voice in the room finally spoke up. The voice was the exact opposite of Matsuda’s abrasive tones, it was soft to the point of fragility.    
  
“Who even asked you?”   
  
“You just did. Your self-important whining isn’t as fun to listen to as you seem to think it is. Oh, it’s so, so hard to be a sociopath doctor. It’s so, so, hard to be a psychopath who cuts people open without a hint of remorse. Have you ever tried being sick?”    
  


“If you’re gonna tell me to stop talking about myself that’s basically the same as telling me to shut the fuck up and go die already.”    
  
“I was going to say, but I would have at least phrased it more polite than that. You really are so vulgar.”   
  
“Well, who cares what you think. I’m going to tell my story anyway.”   
  
“Obviously care a great deal about what I think, otherwise you wouldn’t spend so much time practically begging for my attention. Silly boy.” 

 

Where to begin? **  
** **  
** **December 24th, 2012**

**Enoshima Junko Attempts a Lover’s Suicide with Kumagawa Misogi**

 

Enoshima Junko’s hand was sticking out of the water, her long fingers curled. Matsuda wrapped both of his hands around her hand, but he could not feel any warmth. All of the color had drained out of her body, and her skin was so transparent he could see the veins underneath her skin. Matsuda dragged her and Kumagawa out of the water. He knew he should check for her pulse, but his hands were shaking so hard and he could not stop them. He looked at Kumagawa. His skull had cracked open and Matsuda could see exposed bone in his forehead. His eyes closed, a faint smile on his lips, it just looked like he was sleeping off his traumatic head injury peacefully. Matsuda wanted to throttle him and scream in his face, “You were supposed to take care of her!” He said nothing, but he was too busy with Junko’s body. He stuck his ear to Junko’s chest and buried his face in her.    
  
He heard the faintest of heartbeats.   
Junko’s body started to spasm, her head moved to the side and she spit up water unconsciously. It was shock, or maybe some kind of seizure, but Matsuda could not let go. He found her again, he lost her again, he never wanted to be this close to anybody else. 

  
Mastuda’s eyes stung. The tears he cried at that moment felt like they were burning him.   
  
No, the story begins earlier than that. 

 

**April 4th, 2012** **  
** **Kumagawa Misogi Transfers into Hope’s Peak Academy** **  
  
**

He was a young man of average height, and average built. His hair was so messy it was like fresh ink that had been spilled over his head. He was thin to the point of starvation, a mannequin would have filled out his clothes better than he ever could and seemed more lifelike doing it. Matsuda liked to offend people within five seconds of meeting them. It wasn’t a good strategy for making friends. However, it did significantly decrease the amount of annoying people he had to deal with. 

  
People were always so sensitive.

So insecure.   
How exactly did they expect him to act?   
Like some sort of doctor?   
  
He was used to other people looking away, and their expressions souring as soon as they met him. He was a disagreeable child after all. He was someone tolerated only because he was talented, his only value was his worth.    
  
Kumagawa Misogi looked him directly in the eyes, and then laughed softly. His laughter sounded like falling rain. Kumagawa smiled at him, and Yasuke scowled back. 

 

『Yasuke-chan is so funny…』   
  
“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up. I’m surprised a miserable fuck like you thinks there’s anything worth laughing about.” 

 

『I’m not laughing at you, Yasuke-chan. I’m laughing with you. I’d never laugh at you. 』   
  
You big liar.   
  
No, no, even before that. 

 

**January 1st, 2012** **  
** **Izuru Kamukura is Born**

 

The memory wipe finished days ago. Matsuda did not know how many days ago, because he had not slept since the last surgery, and the days and nights now rammed into each other. Matsuda worked, because if he did not work he knew he would immediately collapse into sleep, and if he slept he would dream about his hands around Hinata’s neck and Hinata asking him why Matsuda hated him so much.    
  
Matsuda was just about to nod off when suddenly his door opened and Mikan came tumbling in. She managed to trip and knock everything off of his desk. Perhaps that was her real talent, because he had no idea how she had gotten into the academy when she was not a nurse. Junko told him to be nicer to her lately, so instead of threatening to kill her, he imagined stabbing her repeatedly in the neck with a scalpel to calm himself down.    
  
“Y-you’re really creepy when you’re smiling, M-m-m-matsuda-kun.” 

 

“I smile like a fucking angel.” Matsuda said, as he picked his labcoat up and lazily put his arm into each sleeve. Mikan announced that after being comatose for days, Kamukura had finally woken up. 

  
When he saw the boy sitting upright in bed, waiting, his eyes were completely blank. Matsuda leaned as close to his face as possible, but Kamukura’s eyes did not change. There was no recognition in them at all. 

  
It’s like he wasn’t seeing Matsuda at all.    
Kamukura did not remember him. Matsuda felt some small part of himself disappear.    
_ I just want to get rid of it all. My life ain’t worth remembering.  _ _  
_ _ But umm…. _ _  
_ _ I hope I don’t forget about you, Matsuda.  _   
  
Matsuda grinded his teeth. “You should have just stayed dead, you idiot…” 

 

No, no, even farther before that. 

**  
** He was born the son of a doctor. His father was a surgeon, and a large hospital was their home.     
He was appointed the general director of the hospital because of the family he had married into.    
  
The first thing Matsuda always remembered about his childhood when asked was the patients who had been hospitalized in his home. Young Matsuda liked to run his toy cars up and down the typical hallways, and he frequently saw through the open doors of the room patients lying on the hospital beds, staring out their windows - some with their bodies wrapped in bandages, others with their limbs suspended in slings. When they noticed him playing with his toys, they stared at him with eyes that might as well have been    
  
One day his mother fell sick and became one of those patients. At first Matsuda was not worried, in fact he thought he was the luckiest child in the world, because living in a hospital meant that his mother was going to be cured for sure.    
  
Then he saw his mother's eyes turn into hollow pits, and when she saw him playing in the hall she no longer recognized him. 

 

One time a girl one year younger than Matsuda was admitted to his parents’ hospital. Their eyes happened to meet through the open door of her hospital room, and from that point on, Matsuda went to visit her.    
  
He didn’t have many close friends. At his school nobody liked him they all thought he acted like he was better than him because he was the son of a doctor. Matsuda wondered why feeble minded people had nothing better to do than feel jealous of people smarter than them. So each day when he came home from grade school, he went to talk to the girl.    
  
Whenever Matsuda was around she acted like a bright and cheerful girl. Sometimes though, he watched her when she did not know he was looking, and she had a gloomy, almost tired expression. Matsuda thought she was a little bit like a sleeping princess, a cloistered princess hiding away in her hospital room. He was worried about the sad faces she made, but whenever he stepped into the hospital room her face turned on like someone flipped a switch.    
  
She had a bandage wrapped around her head.    
  
“I just wanted to see what would happen,” the girl explained why she had jumped from the roof of her grade school classroom. “It’s like when you drop an egg and it explodes and the yoke gets everywhere, I just wondered how that would feel like.”    
  
“Your brain is broken. Your head’s all stupid.”   
  
“I know, right?” 

 

Though Matsuda pretended to be bothered he enjoyed talking with that girl. He liked the way her eyes sparkled when something truly caught her interest, because they looked so dull usually, so he spent all the time with her telling her stories of outside the hospital room. 

One day, when Matsuda was telling his stories a stretcher was rushed down the hallway, past the room the two of them were sitting in. She dragged Matsuda out of the room, and forced him to sneak into the patient’s room because she was morbidly curious to see how bad the patient’s injuries were.    
  
Their father caught both of them, but rather than sending both of them away he allowed them to watch the operation to save his life from behind a glass window. Matsuda should have taken that as the first sign his father had little regard for children. During the operation he died. That girl was shaking. Matsuda took her hand because he thought she was scared, he should have realized… she shook because she could barely contain her excitement.    
  
“Why did he die…?” Matsuda wondered aloud.   
  
“It’s not that he died, it’s just he couldn’t go on living.”   
  
“Why not?”   
  
“He suffered a fatal wound. It’s not about wanting to live, or not wanting to live, after being injured like that there’s no going back. It’s a point of nor return. All you can do is die after that. That’s what a fatal wound means.”    
  
Just like.   
Just like the hole in his mother’s head that caused all of her memories to leak out. 

  
Matsuda went to talk to her the next day but his friend had checked out of the hospital without telling him. He had so much he wanted to tell her, but before he could his mother’s condition got worse. Matsuda thought because he lived in a hospital his mother would get cured.    
  
His father stopped treating his mother.   
He asked Matsuda to move away with him, but when Matsuda refused he just said goodbye.   
He said he would send money when Matsuda’s mother died, but there was no reason for them to continue being a family.    
  
Matsuda knew the truth, his father had simply given up on trying to heal his mother because he was an incompetent doctor. He was going to grow up inside this hospital, and grow up into a better doctor than that old man ever was. 

  
_ I never knew my father. _ _  
_ _ I had a mother once but she died, I never had a father.  _ _  
_ _ More precisely, ever since can I remember, I never had what could be called a conversation with him. The only thing I remember was the view of his back, as he obsessively stared at medical journals on his monitor.  _ _  
_   
  
_ It wasn’t a lack of teaching regimen nor sense of love, he simply had no interest.  _ _  
_ _ Then why did he have me? _ _  
_ _ To appear as a normal married couple? To look like a good hospital director?  _ _  
_ _ The irony of me following the same medical profession wasn’t lost on me. _ _  
_ _ It might have been influenced by the desire to feel something I lacked. Yes.  _ _  
  
_

Matsuda had finally found the beginning of this story.    


“My own mother looked at me like I was a stranger. As far as I can remember, I’ve had nothing to do with other people. I’m too boring, nobody would ever take an interest in my life.”   
  


**June 6th, 2011** **  
** **Hinata Hajime meets Matsuda Yasuke for the First Time**

Tick, tock, tick, tock.    
  
The clock in the steering committee meeting room was so loud.    
It reminded Hinata of how little he was worth everyone’s time here.   
  
Tick, tock, tick, tock.    
Like a metronome wildly swinging between good and bad luck.    
  
Hinata sat up with his shoulders drooping. His eyes were half lidded, and focused on his feet. He hated to be scrutinized by other people, hated to feel like he was a science experiment under a microscope.    
  
“...I hate how boring I am. I hate everything about myself.” 

Hinata sat in a foldable chair that had been brought into the room. His hands were on his knees.    
  
“No matter what I do, I’m just another face in the crowd. Nothing special. I don’t have any obvious talents, I’m completely ordinary. I thought coming to this place would change that so please don’t…”    
  
Hinata had been summoned to speak directly to the steering committee after he had received a notice in the mail that his tuition had gone unpaid. 

“And you’re ashamed of that?” A man sitting with the steering committee spoke up.    
  
Hinata always felt like a child trying to hide his own guilt. Yes he was ashamed. He was deeply ashamed of himself.    
  
“If that’s the case, hope’s peak can bestow a talent upon you.”    
  
“You can… give me a talent?”    
  
“We can. All you have to do is participate in the ‘hope cultivation project.’ It’s actually the reason we wanted you to attend this academy in the first place.”   
  
“You wanted me…?” **  
** **  
** Hinata finally recognized the face. It was Kirigiri Jin the head of the school. “We made a special exception to allow you into the reserve course even after you failed the entrance exam and lacked the funds, because of your potential. Outwardly, you conduct yourself with a degree of self-confidence. You carry the foundation of talent within you.”   
  
“I, do…?”    
  
“We’ve received positive feedback from several teachers in the reserve course regarding you, including a teacher who once taught in the Ultimate Course. Hajime-chan, there’s no need to be ashamed of yourself, you’re someone who can become everybody’s hope.” 

Jin took his hand, and thanked him for having such a nice talk. Hajime felt like he had barely said anything. Jin had been talking the whole time, and his words for everything to Hinata. He walked out of the hallway in a daze, and bumped into the next person who had been summoned to talk with Jin.    
  
White.   
Like red flowers, buried in snow.    
Like cherry blossoms hanging on the branch having lost all their color.    
White hair, white skin.

Hinata felt like he had never seen someone like this before.

And at the same time he was struck by how familiar the boy’s face looked.    
This boy's hair had frayed ends, and the faintest trace of red.  
Red like the blood that was rushing through his veins.   
He could feel his own heartbeat.   
A low rumble in his rib cage.   
Rattling everything.  
  
  
That boy had a gentle smile, which quickly turned into a sneer. “Ewe. A reserve course student. It’s like stepping on gum on the side of the road.” 

“Hey, do you talk to everybody like this when you first meet them?”   
  
“Nope, you’re just special. Kirigiri-san is giving you special treatment after all.” The boy adjusted his bookbag, and turned away. “Why is he going out of his way to flatter somebody from the reserve course? Kirigiri-san is so kind, but he always wastes his kindness on the wrong people.”    
  
He shrugged and disappeared into the room.    
  
“I never want to meet that guy again.”    
  
Hinata grumbled and stormed out with his book bag.    
  
🧸

The campus was divided in two. The west side was for the reserve course students, while the east side was for those of the main course. Hinata had been given special permission to attend a meeting on the east side just for today, but he had to cross to the other side of the campus before his classes started.    
  
As he walked alone he crossed paths with.   
A mechanic with pink hair who was loudly arguing with a boy covered in bandages with a snake around his neck, and the blonde girl who was a literal princess walking ahead of them oblivious to their petty squabbling.    
A boy with a shaved blonde hair growling and spitting, as a girl with white hair trailed behind him and dutifully listened to everything he said.    
  
They all walked by him enjoying their colorful little worlds without even looking his way. Hinata had his eyes on his feet the whole time as he walked. 

“Hinata-san…”   
  
He didn’t even notice there was someone waiting at the gate for him.    
  
“Hinata-san, Hinata-san, Hinata-san. Are you pretending I don’t exist now? I’m sorry, I’m sorry that my existence is so annoying to you. Please forgive me!” 

Hajime looked behind him and took notice of the girl who had suddenly started to apologize to him. She had pink hair tied up in a ribbon that was so old and ratty it barely had any color in it left. Her hair wasn’t so much dyed, instead it looked like it had once been red but faded over time. She wore the reserve course uniform, but she had modified her skirt to be a little bit longer reaching all the way down to her knees. There were frills at the end.    
  
She wore a pair of large mittens that almost looked like oven mitts.   
HInata had never seen her take them off.    
  
“You. I told you to stop apologizing so much.”   
  
“I thought you were mad. You’re scary when you’re mad, you know.” 

“And yet you always insist on pissing me off. I swear you’re doing it on purpose.”    
  
“Hey, hey, how come you’re calling me you. Did you forget my name again? You’re a really inconsiderate guy, you know that.”    


“See! See! You’re doing it right now. You pretend to be all timid then you make snide comments like that! Y-you…”    
  
“It’s Emukae! It’s a w-weird name so sorry if it’s hard to remember. You should really remember your classmates' names though... ” 

“Emukae. No apologizing. If their names were worth remembering they wouldn’t be in the reserve course in the first place.”    


Hinata could not call Emukae his only friend in the reserve course because he did not have any friends to begin with. Friends were for people who were living out rose-colored, interesting high school lives. Nobody would want to be friends with someone who had nothing to offer them. Hinata had accepted a long time ago, after he failed to excel in middle school that nobody really wanted him to be a part of their life.    
  
Emukae had bothered him multiple times to join the gardening club. Nobody else would join it, because apparently other people found her offputting, and the gardening club was going to be shut down. Hinata remembering the many times he had attempted to join clubs in high school, only to quit in two weeks and be made fun of by the rest of his class turned her down. She put his name on the registry anyway, and she got to keep her club. Ever since then she occasionally followed him around.    
  
It was like she had taken an interest in him, but that wasn’t possible.    
His story wasn’t that interesting. Hinata studied hard in middle school, and somehow by accident, or dumb luck he had tested into a high ranking high school that was out of his league. He had gotten a big head then and assumed this must have meant he had potential.    
  
However, within the first semester of his old highschool he washed out.

When it got hard, he stopped trying.    
He read stories of talented people at Hope’s Peak overcoming impossible circumstances, and yet he couldn’t do something so simple as try.    
  
“You’ve got an intense expression on your face. Like you’re thinking really hard. You’re not thinking about how much you hate me are you? You just can’t stand being around me is that it?”   
  
“No… I just hate being here.”    
  
“Here? Where are you Hinata-san?” 

“The reserve course. I shouldn’t be here.”    
  
“Eh? Is the reserve course really that bad?”   
  
Emukae fiddled with her locker door trying to get it open with her thick gloves. Hinata sighed, and leaned over her short self, opening the door for her. The two of them had done this song and dance before.    
  
“It’s the same as any other school, right? I bet the Ultimate Course is like this too, just a bunch of kids thrown into the same class. If you get along with all of your friends you think your class is best in the world, or if you’re like me, and the students stab holes in your gym clothes, and every time you try to ask the teacher for help he asks if you’ll meet with him after school hours and tries to get you to give him your phone number, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”    
  
“If you apologize that much it’ll just annoy people.”    
  
“I’m sorry for being sorry!  If you got along with others I’m sure you’d like it. Maybe it’s not the class, maybe it’s just you. If you don’t get along with others, you’ll be miserable even in the Ultimate Course.” 

Being around Emukae made him uncomfortable. She was more observant than the average person. They had already gotten their books from their locker, and the two of them were the first ones in their empty classroom. Even if this place filled up with other students it would still seem empty to Hinata.    
  
“Yeah, I’m really a pitaible case aren’t I? There’s no helping someone who just stops trying.”    
  
Hinata suddenly looked at her seriously.    
  
“If someone offered to kill you, but they guaranteed that when your next life would be better than the one you died from would you do it.” 

“Hinata-san, you shouldn’t talk about dying like it’s an easy thing.”   
  
Hinata looked like he was on the brink of tears. He had been so happy a moment ago when Jin said that the academy needed someone like him, that he had potential. 

“Two people died in the reserve course already, and nobody even talks about them anymore. I bet if I didn’t come to school tomorrow, nobody would miss me.”   
  
“Y-you…”    
  
Hinata’s hand tightened into a fist. “Nobody needs one more ordinary person.” 

Her face was wrong.   
The expression of a broken doll.    
  
“Ordinary? I don’t understand that feeling at all. Even though that would be the most wonderful thing. This thing called ‘ordinary’, you see, means ‘not being a bother to strangers’. People like me only end up annoying others, and because of that I always feel the need to apologize.”   
  
Hinata looked away.

Hinata started to walk away from her.   
  
“Ordinary, it’s just… getting along with the people around you. Why do you hate that so much?”    
  
Hinata left her alone in that room. In the hallway he covered both of his ears. He skipped class that day, and the next day after that, as he expected not a single person besides Emukae noticed he was gone. 

  
  


🧸

 

Hinata squinted as he worked on days worth of missing homework. He had forgotten about everything else, he had forgotten the whole world, the words Kirigiri told him played in his head on an endless loop. 

Hinata was glad he no longer had to show up to class. He found his classmates so tedious.    
The smiles of other people were so meaningless.    
He didn’t want to look at their pasted on expressions.    
  
Basically, he was just a regular apathetic low achiever.   
There wasn’t a single reason for someone like him to live.    
  
Until he found him.    
  
He was in the same restaurant, loudly slurping his ramen like he owned the place. He read a manga magazine with his free hand to avoid eye contact with other people. He had no table manners at all, Hinata immediately thought he was someone that should be avoided. Before he could find somewhere else to sit, the boy next to him spoke up to him.    
  
“Hey you, reserve course student pass me some pepper.”    
  
“Huh? What?”    
That boy had a greasy appearance, and skin so pale he looked like he had been locked in a basement for several days in a row. His tie was crooked, his shirt was untucked and covered in several stains, and he was wearing socks with sandals.    
  
Despite that, Hinata could not look away from him.    
Hinata always looked at other people like they were dirty, full of disgusting words and gestures and a longing to be close. He never understood why other people could stand being so close, but… suddenly he started to feel that way. He wanted to look at this person more. 

“How did you know I’m a reserve course student?”   
  
“You just give off the reserve course vibe. That is to say you give off no vibe at all, but you’re trying so hard to look like you are.”    
  
“Ugh. No matter how you look at it, I’m just a reserve course student.” Hinata was too busy sulking, and just let Matsuda steal off his plate. He got the feeling that Matsuda was the type who liked to push people around. “...Uh.”   
  
“Hey, quit acting so fucking shy. It’s not cute at all.”    
  
Hinata knew he was just bothering this person.    
  
“Doesn’t the main school have a nice dining hall? Why did you come all the way out here to eat?”    
  
“Hey, what does it matter to you? Get off my ass already. You really must have nothing going on in your own life if you have time to be worrying about me.”    
  
“Um, okay… Guess that’s fair.”   
  
The conversation ended just like that.   
Hinata was just pestering him after all.   
This was what a student from the main course was like.    
He was able to act so confident because he had talent.    
  
“Check please!”   
  
Hinata realized this was a person who would continue treating him like an annoyance, but when he thought Matsuda would leave him just like that, he didn’t want it to end so quickly. “Uh,hey, what’s your super high school level talent?” 

“...”   
  
“Hey, it’s not nice to ignore people.”    
  
“My name isn’t hey.”   
  
“What are you, five?”   
  
“No, that’s your intelligence level. Damn brainless robot.”    
  
“Do you always insult people right after you meet them?”   
  
“Yeah, the sad part about being so much smarter than everybody else is that you have to deal with a lot of stupid people.”   
  
Hinata immediately felt the urge to back away. He was unused to people pushing him around so easily. It was like this person had seen through his bluster and fake confidence immediately. “F-fine then, what’s your name?”    
  
“Gimme your name first. That is if you have the brain power to remember it.”    
  
“I’m Hinata…”    
  
“And your first name?”   
  
“Hajime.” 

“Wow, I’m impressed. For a robot you managed to imitate  normal human conversation. You’re a reserve course student amongst reserve course students. You’re a one of a kind. Anyway, check please!” 

“Uh, what about you? W-we were talking.”    
  
“Why do you want to know my name in the first place? What, were you gonna ask me on a date?”

“W-well with that attitude I’m definitely not going to ask you now…”    
  
Matsuda had already collected his change and was making his way towards the door. Hinata recognized the slouch in Matsuda’s shoulders, it was like he also did not want anybody to look at him. “Really? And you were practically begging for my attention a moment ago. Your tongue was hanging out and everything, just hoping someone from the main course would throw you a bone.”    


Reserve course dog.    
It was exactly the same as what Sakakura Juzo had called him.   
It was like Matsuda was intentionally trying to piss him off every time he opened his mouth.   
He deliberately picked the words that would hurt him the most.   
He made precise cuts with his scalpel.    
Matsuda was so rough with his ego.

All Hinata could do was stare at Matsuda’s long fingers.    
So delicate and thin.

And wonder what those hands were used for.    
  
“I have something to say-”     
  
“Don’t care. Why don’t you write them in your diary at home and then cry about it. Senpai doesn’t like you, in fact he hates you.”    
  
“W-we’re the same age.” 

“Really? Because you look like an infant to me. It’s too bad you’re one of those ugly babies that nobody likes.”    
  
Yasuke slammed the door as he left, leaving Hinata completely in the dust. Hinata just stared at the space where he had been a moment ago, and closed his empty fingers. When Matsuda was leaving, he had reached out for and just missed his sleeve. He had not been able to make that boy stay with him.    
  
“Super high school level asshole.”    
  
“And you’re just a regular, garden variety asshole. Sucks being average at everything, doesn’t it?” Matsuda shouted back.    
He seemed to have a pathological need to always get the last word in.    
  
🧸

 

The next day Hinata was introduced to the doctor who would be working with him in the Kamukura project.   
  
Matsuda Yasuke.   
A prodigy who had graduated from medical school at seventeen years old. He aimed to make a complete map of where the brain stores memory, and in the future wanted to download, overwrite, and even restore memories that had been previously unlocked.    
  
Matsuda took one look at him and said no.    
_ I’m sorry for being such an unimpressive person.  _   
  
🧸

 

“Hey reserve course guy.”    
  
Matssuda suddenly appeared in his life the next day. He had his eyebrows turned downward in the same condescending look as always. It had been two days and Hinata wondered ifMatsuda had slept at all in that time, there were now deep circles underneath his arms. Despite the fact he hadn’t slept he had a serious case of bedhead.    
  
Matsuda was a complicated person.   
He was beautiful in a way that was impossible to describe in words.    
  
“Beep boop. Did anybody teach the robot how to do math?” 

“Um, well…”    
  
“Math is the only subject you’re not failing now. I’m almost impressed.”    
  
“You looked up my grades? They let you do that?”   
  
“You should just be happy that someone is finally taking an interest in your life.”    
  
Matsuda hooked his elbow around Hinata and began to drag him away. Hinata felt like he was being stolen. Matsuda sure was rough, but he did not mind being so cose to him.    
  
“Why… did you drag me out here?”    
  
They were sitting in the middle of the main course dormitory. Matsuda had piled up books on both sides of the table.    
  
“I thought you wanted me to make you smarter.” 

“Umm, but you said there would be surgery involved.”    
  
“You’re right, this method has less unethical mad science, so obviously it’s way less fun, but it’s also way less likely to make you brain dead.”    
  
“D-d you think talent is something people are born with, or is it something special in their brains?” Hinata said, looking at the open notebooks in front of him. “Like, if there’s a person that could study all day and not get the material.” 

“God, it’s like you want to be brain dead. Is thinking really that hard on you?” Matsuda sighed, ever since the two of them had been introduced, Hinata had been getting more and more eager to pressure Matsuda into approving him as a candidate for the surgery. “It’s not a hard rule, but there are plenty of cases like that, yeah.” 

Silence fell between them as Hinata’s pen scratched the paper. The only subject he was ever decent in was math. Teachers used to praise him for it, and then one day they stopped.   
  
Hinata really had no idea when he became like this.   
At Emukae pointed out, being normal was a wonderful thing.  
It was hardly something to complain about.   
He had two parents, he had food every day, he had gotten into two really expensive schools even though he did not deserve to go to either of them. He had plenty of classmates who had tried to get close to him.   
One day he woke up and realized how unhappy he was with his own life.   
  
“Hey, robot, how are you so good at math?”   
  
“Um, it’s not like I’m good at it. I can just understand it without studying too hard, and the numbers fit together well in my head.”   
  
“Why don’t you like studying then?”  
  
“If I can’t figure it out right away then I don’t like it. I told you I’m a really lame guy.”   
  
“What about other people? Do you like them?”   
  
“I don’t really get along with them well. I mean when I’m talking to people I feel like I’m just imitating what everybody else is doing.”   
  
Hinata could hear the ticking of the clock.  
But his own heartbeat was the loudest metronome sounding off in his own ears.   
  
“Do you like it when other people touch you?”   
  
Hinata looked away uncomfortably. “Nah, I don’t really like… other people’s hands.”   
  
“Then what about when people smile at you?”   
  
“People’s smiles just seem empty to me.”   
  
“When people get together in groups do you really understand then?”  
  
“Nah, it’s confusing. Other people make no sense at all. I don’t get why they’re the ones looking down on me. I don’t get what they find enjoyable. It’s like they’re all happy with their boring little lives because they don’t know any better.”  
  
Maybe everybody else had a script he was not following. Get along with others, Emukae said, like it was easy. There was nothing wrong with him, no deficit, he was so utterly normal so why did he always feel like he was hiding.   
  
“And you know better?”  
  
“Yeah, it feels like I do. I just know I could be way better if I tried.”   
  
“But you don’t know anything.”   
  
“You were just setting up to insult me, weren’t you?”   
  
“You catch on fast. See, all this studying is working.” Matsuda repeatedly clicked his pen over and over again. It was rather obnoxious. It seemed impossible for Matsuda to exist in a room without making some kind of scene. “You don’t need brain surgery after all.”   
  
For someone who wanted other people to stay as far away from him as possible.  
He certainly attracted a lot of attention.   
  
“Then, what if… What if you could mess with someone’s brain until they had every talent? They’d be able to learn anything as long as they tried hard enough.”   
  
“What if just like people can be born smart, people can also be born dumb, and no matter how many times I operate on your brain only death will cure your stupidity.” 

 

Hinata smiled at Matsuda for the first time.    
A sincere, genuine smile.    
  


“That’s fine. I don’t mind dying.”    
  
“Hey reserve course piece of shit why don’t you just walk off the roof of the school building and pray you’ll be talented in the next life if you’re looking for an excuse to die-”    
  
“No, that’s not it.” Hinata reached across the table. He placed his hands over Matsuda’s. Even though they both hated touching other people, they tolerated it. Ever since he saw Matsuda’s fingers he had wondered what it would be like to have those hands pluck at every single one of his strings.    
  
“I’m going to go with my second choice for the experiment.”   
  
“No!”

 

Hinata for the first time stood up to Matsuda instead of letting the other drag him around.    
  
“I hate that.”   
  
“You hate what?”    
  
“If you don’t do it to me. If you don’t do the experiment. Then I won’t be your monster.”    
  
“Why do you-”   
  
“Why are you always yelling at others? It’s like you’re trying to make people hate you?” Hinata’s eyes were pitch black pits, exactly like the ones Matsuda used to see at the hospital. He saw Enoshima Junko’s eyes. He saw his mother’s eyes.    
  
It’s not that he died he just couldn’t go on living.   
That’s what a fatal wound means.    
  
“You actually don’t care that much about other people. You just hate yourself. I’m the same as you are.”   
  
“You’re a fucking idiot.”    
  
“I hate Hinata Hajime. That’s why, whatever happens to me, I don’t mind.”    


He curled his fingers around Matsuda’s. As he thought about how those same hands would make him into a monster. If he wasn’t his monster, then he wouldn’t be important to Matsuda at all. 

_ I’m so empty. _ _  
_ _ I’m so shallow. _ _  
_ _ But would you still be tender with me?  _   
  



	54. INTERMISSION ONE

Exams approached fast, and Matsuda had made no progress at all on the Kamukura project. Matsuda, who had no family to speak of, and no money besides the living expenses check he got from his father once a month that had suddenly stopped when he was thirteen had paid for medical school because he was scouted as a prospect by Hope’s Peak Academy. 

They paid his bills on the premise that he would become a future researcher for their school. As he already had his medical license there was no reason for him to attend a school full of celebrities and call himself the brain surgeon boy wonder, except for paying all of his expenses so far the school expected him to produce results for them.  
  
Matsuda supposed there was the option of dropping out and trying to find employment elsewhere, but the medical world looked to experience. Graduating medical school at seventeen, completing residency at eighteen those sounded impressive but to doctors who had been working for years he was just some snot nosed kid acting like he knew better than them.  
  
He would need years to get to the position that Hope’s Peak allowed him to have, and Matsuda did not have years. He was already watching her disappear right in front of him.  
  
Truth be told he hated it when people called him a prodigy or chalked his accomplishments up to talent. Of course he studied more, and faster than anyone else, he did not have the time. He had already watched his mother waste away in front of him once. Everybody else got to be children for eighteen years, Matsuda only had a mother for eight years. Then it was over, then he was on his own.  
  
Matsuda wondered how normal people could be so content with their lives. How they could possibly think that things would stay the same, people would stay happy, the status quo would last forever.  
  
It can all fall apart.  
Everything you think is guaranteed in life, isn’t. You are not guaranteed three meals a day, you’re not guaranteed a mother’s love, all of it is conditional. Useless children get thrown out, that was what he learned.  
  
He knew if he kept stalling the Kamukura project forever he would fail his exams, and be kicked out of the school. They would drop him just like that. Then medical school, ridiculous research expenditures from the neurology lab, all the debts would fall on him at once.  
  
Nobody would care that he was a child.  
Because he was a child smarter than most adults they told him they would not treat him like one. Because he had talent, everybody was expecting great things from him.  
  
Matsuda considered it might be worth it to tell them to fuck off, and that he would never do the surgery.  
  
Kirigiri touched a hand to his shoulder. Matsuda remembered thinking many times he was surprised by how young Kirigiri looked, like he was a grown up kid. “I know you think I can’t possibly understand what you’ve been through, but my own wife was sick in bed once.”  
  
He said this to Matsuda after Kizakura found him. Matsuda had been laughed out of medical school admissions because he had lied about his age on the entry exams. Everyone always asked him what his big rush was.  
  
“If only she had a doctor like you to help her. When someone in front of you is sick, you can’t give up on them, can you?”  
  
That was a lie Matsuda had given up on plenty of people.  
In that moment he remembered the doctors who had given up on his mother.  
  
A room with uncomfortably bright lightning.  
Black and white scans of the brain, backlit by glowing light.  
A faceless doctor standing over him.  
Matsuda on his knees.  
He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t cry.  
He would never show the adults any tears again.  
“I’ll do anything so please, please…”  
He begged the doctors to look at his mother again.  
The doctors told him to stop making a scene.  
He was restricted from visiting his mother after that point.  
  
Kizakura lit a cigarette and looked away. Matsuda reminded him that there was no smoking in the hospital, but the man didn’t listen. Kirigiri’s fingers curled around his shoulder. Kirigiri’s eyes looked younger than his own, somehow, like a child staring into a snowglobe imagining something wonderful. Finish medical school and attend Hope’s Peak in three years, Kirigiri said, like it was easy.  
  
Everyone always turned their noses up at him, but Kirigiri looked him directly in the eye. “Why would I go to your school for children who need to be told three times a day they’re special or else they’ll start crying?”  
  
“Because we need you there.” He was needed.  
  
He wanted to laugh every time Hinata bought the steering committees lies. Pretending that he was someone special, that the project needed him to continue. They all acted like they wouldn’t just reboot the Kamukura project with another reserve course flunkie if Hinata turned them down. 

Hinata so desperate to be cut open so he could be one of the special children in the main course.  
  


 _You’re the same, aren’t you?_  
No, he wasn’t.  
 _You’re afraid they’ll kick you out of the main course if you don’t give them results._  
He pretended he was so above Hinata, but in the end they were both being used. 

Everyone needed him. Everyone depended on him. He was everyone’s tool.  
 _You like it don’t you?_  
  
Matsuda delayed the surgery as long as he could with excuse after excuse. He kept meeting with Hinata every day anyway, but since he wasn’t operating they just spent the time talking about nothing in particular. Matsuda had never talked to someone simply because he wanted to pass the time, free time was for other kids with families, and lives outside of the hospital. It was strange talking to someone who expected nothing from him.  
  
Why did Hinata stay with him even after he told him he wasn’t doing the surgery?  
Did Hinata just like being around him?  
No, that was completely impossible.  
  
Either way he could not delay forever. The day that exams came, Hinata knew things were coming to an end. He would be thrown out of the school. A prodigy who turns twenty just becomes a normal person, he would wash out. A helpless child once more, even though he struggled harder than anybody else to become an adult.  
  
Matsuda thought that was for the best.  
At least this way he was the only one getting hurt. He could remain Hinata’s doctor until the end. He didn’t have to become his killer.  
  
“Maybe if I’m lucky the whole school will explode and I won’t have to take exams.”  
  
Matsuda grumbled as he dragged himself out of bed that day. While he was walking to the biology building, suddenly he heard a loud bang, and the entire campus shook.  
  
“Goddamnit.” 

 

🧸

 

**July, 2012. Aftermath of the Komaeda Bombing Incident.**

_I don’t have time for this._  
  
Matsuda thought as he watched a bunch of senile old men continue to waste time blabbering on in front of him. Talent this, hope that, Matsuda concluded they were so senile they had completely forgotten that  this school didn’t exist for the sake of humanity, but rather for a few old men to line their pockets by taking advantage of talented kids.  
  
This whole school was a circus, and the main course was the freak show. He had no idea why Hinata wanted to attend the main course so badly. They existed for the normals to gawk at and treat like celebrities and distract from where all the funding in this school really went. Matsuda reminded himself he wasn’t a kid attending school, he wasn’t here to make friends, he was a researcher and the rest of the student body was his subjects.  
  
The moment he even considered testing on humans he should have had his license revoked.  
Matsuda stared at his own hands.  
 _If getting these hands dirty could somehow protect her._  
He would stick his fingers straight into the blood and guts. He would sink into the filth to keep her clean. 

“You were brought to this school for the Kamukura project…”  
  
“Awe, and I thought you guys just wanted me for my pretty face. What if I refuse?”  
  
There was a feeling in the air that it was already decided. A silence. One of the old men laughed. Clowns at the circus. Soon, the others joined in… 2, 3 people. Laughter stabbed into  him like needles, injecting something cold straight into his blood.  
  
“Oy, Matsuda-kun…” Suddenly the laughter stopped. “Do you think you really have a choice? The patient you’re treating, his health hasn’t improved at all, and there’s currently several members of the committee lobbying for his expulsion.” 

Matsuda frowned. “What are you saying?”  
  
“Gekkougahara agreed with us. Komaeda hasn’t shown any signs of improvement, despite being given multiple chances. We’re wasting the school’s resources on him, and he’s not even a talented student, just a lottery winner. How much time do you think this school has for a disobedient child who doesn’t want to learn better?”  
  
Time. Time. Time.  
Tick, Tick, Tic.  
The pendulum swinging back and forth did not care at all what it knocked down.

“Gekkougahara? Her time is being wasted? Last time I checked, she dumped him on me. And he’s fucking sick. Hope’s Peak is the most advanced medical facility in the world, if we throw him out into another hospital he’ll just die.”  
  
“You’re still a student. We’d rather not have you wasting time on a child that has no chance of being cured. This is a place to nurture talent, those idiots who aren’t up to it should just leave-”  
  
“Shut the fuck up, old man!” 

"… Wha?"

"Blah blah blah, you’re only spouting fucking nonsense." 

Matsuda felt like screaming. He spoke in a quiet, but strained to the point of shaking voice instead. 

"… W-why you insolent"

Matsuda stood up and the old man froze. He stared at all of the older men-No, there was a lot of anger and contempt put into it, so it was more of a glare. It was the look you gave an insect when stomping on it.

“Incurable? Unfixable? He’s not any of those things at all. He’s just a little bit stupid is all and the only one allowed to call him a big idiot is me. If I waste my time on some idiot why the fuck do any of you care?” 

“You should-” 

"I said shut the fuck up." Matsuda easily quieted the men by saying that and then he continued in a soft voice. “No matter how many times people scream at him, he doesn’t bother to stick up for himself. I’m a doctor, aren’t I? You’re telling me not to treat a patient? You’re telling me to just sit there and let him die because it’s inconvenient. Then what the fuck are doctors even for? Why did I shove this degree up my ass and become such a smartass for, then?”  

“Ah, may I say something?” A new voice cut in. It belonged to Kirigiri. Matsuda’s childlike eyes were sparkling. “Komaeda-kun is necessary for this school’s Kamukura project. This school needs him as much as it needs you. If the Kamukura project were to continue, I could arrange for Komaeda to be suspended from other courses, and kept on school grounds under your supervision for treatment.” 

 _This might be your chance._  
If only he could put that precious boy in a box where he could be kept safe.  
Everyone else who entered into Komaeda’s life harmed him in the end.  
Matsuda wanted to be the one person who could heal him. He wanted to be the one touch Komaeda was not afraid of.

Matsuda asked where Komaeda was.

“The worthy and the worthless. At the moment of birth we’re divided into two clear groups. No matter how hard a worthless person works they can never be worthy.” 

  
His sharp, catlike eyes narrowed.  
He leaned in further, he looked in awe of something.  
A colorful show of lights displayed across his face, in his eyes.  
His attention, rapt.  
  
“Simply put, talent is everything.”  
  
And I’m nothing.  
Koameda’s next words went unspoken of course.  
  
His skin was as pale as the moon. He looked like someone the light was meant to reflect beautifully off of. The low light of the window emphasized every curve of his hollow face, his high cheeks, the shape of his nose. His white hair, dazzled in the light.  
  
“I want to help those with talent shine brightly.”  
  
Komaeda had begun to smile without even realizing it. If a starving little kid was brought to a candy shop how would they react? They’d open their mouths as wide as possible and start to drool. Komaeda thought he was the same. Everything sweet he ever tasted quickly turned bitter in his mouth. He thought finally, he could attend school, be with his classmates.  
  
He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be with them.  
He wanted to be worthy.  
He was just taking up a seat that could have gone to someone more talented.  
They didn’t want him here.  
It was in everybody’s eyes that refused to look at him directly. The people who recoiled at his touch. Komaeda knew it was selfish, but he wanted to be here in the moment with everyone else. He wanted to exist in the colorful frame with them, he wanted to feel and see the same colors they did.  
  
That’s why he would do anything to show them.

He wished he had the words. He wished he could explain himself to them, but he was confusing and hard to understand. The moment he started talking everyone made those faces at him. Before he realized it someone always got angry.  
  
He was so stupid. He couldn’t say something as simple as _I want to be friends with you all._  
  
“I want to see the absolute hope, which will be born from that, with my own eyes. When hope and hope collide, I want to be there, to see the brilliant sparks fly!”  
  
There, with everyone else.

“There’s no such thing as a hope that hurts others,” Yukizome Chisa replied coldly.  
  
Komaeda Nagito was frozen. He replayed his words in his head trying to pick out the detail. No, it was better to just apologize. “That’s fine. No need to get worked up over a piece of trash like--”  
  
Komaeda was slapped clear across the face. As Matsuda walked in he saw pale flowers, turn red.  
  
“You aren’t trash! You’re my precious student. And I am your teacher.”  
  
“Sensei...?” 

Matsuda suddenly got in between them. He practically slapped Chisa’s hand away.  
  
“You know teacher, you can keep hitting him like that and no matter what Komaeda will assume that it’s his fault. He can’t hate other people no matter what, that’s the kind of stupidly nice guy he is.” Matsuda picked his scalpel up and stabbed it into the desk where Chisa’s hands had been a moment ago. “But me, I’m just an asshole.”  
  
“What are you doing Matsuda-kun?”  
  
Komaeda reached up and tugged at his elbow.  
  
“Cleaning up your fucking messes, because apparently that’s just my life now.” 

“Matsuda-kun, please. You’re being far too nice to someone like me.”  
  
“Me? Nice? Did you just call me nice? Yeah, I fucking love always babysitting you, nothing makes me happier in life, because I’m just such a nice guy.” Matsuda, incredibly insulted at the implication that there was a shred of decency inside of him. “You’re just a weird brain that I want to dissect.”  
  
“Of course, Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“Me being nice to you would require me actually fucking liking you, for one.”  
  
“And you hate idiots don’t you, Matsuda-kun.”  
  
Matsuda never lied to him.  
  
Komaeda sometimes whispered those words over and over again like a prayer to calm himself down. Everyone else called Komaeda a liar, but in Komaeda’s perspective he was always telling the truth. It was just the word was made up of lies.  
  
There were rules to follow that contradict one another and made no sense in his mind at all. The adults acted like the rules were always there, like they were natural, like they were normal and everyone who couldn’t follow the rules wasn’t.  
  
The adults were all liars who just could not admit that these rules were just things they made up. The adults lied to him over and over, but Matsuda wouldn’t lie. That was why his harsh words were really calming to Komaeda.  
  
For the first time Komaeda did not have to live in fear of what someone else was thinking. Komaeda did not have to try to read Matsuda’s face, because he told Komaeda what he felt the moment he felt it. He complained so much, but Komaeda found his complaints to be refreshing.  
  
Chisa made an excuse and left the room. She eyed Matsuda suspiciously like the scum of the earth. Well that was better than being called nice anyway. 

“Matsuda-kun. Am I trash?”  
  
“Yeah, you smell like something died.”  
  
“It was me. I died.”  
  
“Don't say that. If I let you die then I’m not your doctor, I’m just some idiot. And I’m not. I’m a fucking genius doctor.”   
  
“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to look down on Matsuda-kun's wonderful talent.”

Matsuda held out his shoulder. Komaeda looked confused.  
  
“Ah, I can walk on my own-”  
  
“No you can’t. How many people have you talked to already today? Kirigiri-san, and Yukizome-sensei for sure. How many times were you yelled at for coming to school with a bomb shoved up your ass?” 

“Um, it wasn’t there Matsuda-kun.”    
  
“You can barely stand, so I’m going to carry you.” 

Komaeda gave in to Matsuda.  
He let himself be carried to the biology lab on his back. In Komaeda’s blurred vision, the white lab coat he wore almost looked like a pair of wings folded over his back. Komaeda wanted to rest his head just a bit longer, in the white, feathery, down.  
  
He was laid down on a bed of feathers.  
Matsuda pulled the blanket over him.  
It didn’t hurt anymore it just tickled. Tickled by so many feathers. It made Komaeda want to be able to smile and laugh without having to force it. 

“Hey idiot, I’m going to let you rest a bit. Try not to blow up the school while I’m gone.”  
  
“I’ll try my best.”  
  
“I’m serious. I don’t want you to trip and fall and have another bomb fall out of your ass.”  
  
“They weren’t in my-”  
  
“Am I being too harsh? I guess it’s not that big of a deal. It’s not like anything exploded, OH WAIT IT DID.”  
  
“You’re going to hold this against me for the rest of my life, aren’t you?”

Komaeda knew he deserved it but still, Matsuda sure liked to complain.  
  
He drifted off to sleep,and then drifted back again.  
He saw Matsuda watching him.  
A white blur at his bedside, composed of light, he was so warm.  
For Komaeda it was enough just to be close to that person.

Matsuda’s face pensive, so thoughtful. “You shouldn’t say that so easily.”  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“You sound like you really, really want to die, and you’re just looking for a good reason. I bet you wish you were caught up in that explosion. How many people gotta get caught up in your ass blast radius?”  
  
“The bomb wasn’t…” Komaeda realized that was not the point. “It’s not like I wanted that. I wanted to help everyone, I thought it was unfair everybody had to take exams except for me because I won a lottery ticket. If I did die though, I doubt anyone would…”  
  
“What about me, huh? Did you even think about me?”  
  
“Matsuda-kun, you’re angry.”  
  
“Of course I’m angry. Anybody would be angry if they worked their hardest to save someone’s life, and then that person went and died like an idiot five minutes later.”  
  
“Ah, I’m sorry. I’m the one who made you angry. Matsuda-kun does his best for me, but I’m not trying at all. It’s like I’m laughing at all of your hard work.”  
  
Matsuda suddenly felt like taking a scalpel to the throat. That was the quickest way he could think of to shut himself up. He just complained about Gekkougahara yelling at Komaeda for being unfixable, and he did the same thing.  
  
If only Komaeda had a different doctor, someone who could say the words _I care about you_ without screaming it in his face.  
  
“Of course I would prefer to live. I want to spend more time with Matsuda-kun. It’s just, I have so little time, and I haven’t done anything to help you yet. More than anything. Please. Let me. I haven’t helped at all.”  
  
Time.  
The pendulum swung carelessly, between good luck and bad luck.  
More time with Komaeda?  
He didn’t get to act like he was Komaeda’s friend. They weren’t just hanging out.  
He was treating his patient. Komaeda would die while he was wasting all this time.  
The tickin grew louder in Matsuda’s head, drowning out even his own thoughts.  
  
“If you disappear it won’t help anybody. Only idiots think that. You and him, you’re both such idiots.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“No one. Look, I’m not angry at you. I was angry at myself. Matsuda hates himself, yeah, yeah we get it already. Enough with the cranky doctor routine. Anyway, I just keep giving you new medications and writing down the effects, I’m barely treating you anymore.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun, no you…”  
  
“I’m mixing you so many cocktails I’m basically just your bartender. I might as well be throwing science to a wall and seeing what sticks at this point.”  
  
“Actually with me, that might actually work.”  
  
“I’m your doctor and I can’t do a single thing to relieve your pain.”  
  
Matsuda said, standing up then.  
  
“What does it mean to be a doctor anyway? What point is there prolonging someone’s suffering if they die no matter what you do?”  
  
“That’s not it.”  
  
Komaeda said in a soft voice as he picked up a scalpel from Matsuda’s desk, and carved a tally mark into his skin. “I’m really stupid, but I won’t forget. From now on, I’ll count the number of times you’ve saved my life. You saved me over and over again…”  
  
“I’m not a doctor.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun, I’m glad that you’re here.” 

Matsuda knew he was not qualified to hear those words from Komaeda.  
But.  
Somewhere deep inside of him he felt a little bit better hearing them. 

Matsuda almost let the load he was carrying lighten.  
He wanted to stay in that biology room, talking with nothing about Komaeda just a little bit longer.  
  
His phone rang. “Yes sir, this is Matsuda. Always at your service.”  
  
“We’d like to discuss the release of your upcoming paper. To put it bluntly… it will be postponed indefinitely.”  
  
“May I ask why.”  
  
“It’s all theoretical. You have no data, all of it is lacking.”  
  
“The theory is solid though-”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Goodness gracious. You’re just a snot-nosed brat without a shred of clinical experience. You’re no more of a real doctor than the ones who go on television to make money. You really thought your school science project was going to help anybody?”  
  
He had to complete the Kamukura project because nobody would take his work on memory seriously. Hope’s Peak would only fund his memory research if he contributed to the Kamukura project. He knew his theory was solid, he could make progress towards killing the disease that killed his mother.  
  
He knew there was a genetic component.  
What if his mother’s sickness spread to him?  
Nancy Wexler spent her entire life studying Huntington's disease only to develop it herself.  
What if Junko…  
All he wanted was to spend as much time with her as possible.  
  
He couldn’t go forward with the Kamukura project because he didn’t want to lose Hinata.  
He had no time left to make the decision.  
Matsuda wasn’t an angel. He had no wings to save everybody.  
There were a lot of people he didn't even try to help.  
His back wasn’t strong enough to support anyone.  
He could barely carry his own weight.  
  
“Matsuda-kun, are you alright?”  
  
Komaeda was supposed to be oblivious.  
  
“Thank you, sir. I’ll take your advice to heart.”  
  
He closed the flip phone. Komaeda had never heard Matsuda be so polite before. If there was one thing Matsuda never did it was wear fake smiles to please others. The smile on Matsuda’s face at that moment was especially terrifying. 

 

🧸

 

“Hey, what’s with your hair?”  
  
“Ah. I stopped cutting it myself.”

Hinata’s hair had grown just a little bit longer than usual.  
  
“I’m surprised somebody trusts you to be alone with a pair of scissors.”  
  
“Is that why you don’t want to use me for the project? You don’t trust me.” Hinata said, tugging at his collar. Matsuda wondered if that spinelessness was a part of his charm. Hinata felt like someone you could say anything too, and Matsuda liked to run his mouth.  
  
Perhaps that was why he was using the few days Komaeda’s stunt had bought him to study with Hinata again.  
  
“I don’t want to cut your future sort. You haven’t even grown up yet. You’re not anybody yet.”  
  
“Do you think I could become someone?”  
  
“You could be a really talented cashier.”  
  
“...”  
  
“There's someone who really needs you? What’s Mcdonalds going to do without their best fry cook?”  
  
“What did I ever do to make your expectations so low!?” Hinata had the funniest reactions too. He just got so wound up over everything. He was like a little doll with the key turned all the way in his back.  
  
As much as that made Matsuda want to take all of his gears out and line them up to see him more naked than anyone had ever saw him, Matsuda was also afraid what would happen if those gears broke.  
  
“What. I said you had a job. I was trying to be nice.”  
  
“That’s you trying to be nice? I’m really terrified of what you’ll be like when you get me.”  
  
Matsuda gave no response. He just laughed. It was the first time Hinata had seen it laugh, just like the rest of him, it was cocky as hell and completely convinced of his own self worth. Matsuda wanted to laugh louder. He felt like he finally understood why Komaeda was always laughing.  
  
Because he didn’t want to think. If he didn’t continue the Kamukura project, they would throw Komaeda out of the school. Hinata and Komaeda. Two are standing next to each other, each one of them holding a nose around their neck. The doctor told him to pretend to be someone else’s son. He should stop making trouble for his mother. She was suffering enough already. You’re her son, aren’t you? You should be taking care of her. Mother’s hands trembled at the sink. She washed her hands over and over again until they turned blue and pruny.He saw her eye the knife. She muttered to Matsuda could hear. Parents can’t choose their children. Parents can’t choose their children. Parents can’t choose their children. When mother stopped eating he tried to prepare the food with his small hands and cut himself with a knife. He looked to blood as it fell from the gash in his hand. He realized that no one was going to stop the bleeding. No one was going to fuss over him anymore. That thought made him want to cry.  
  
He cried and his mother heard.  
She stared at him like she did not recognize him.

Because of my childish pleading.  
The person I loved so greatly beat me.  
  
He was a doctor. He was sick. Matsuda apologized over and over. _I’m sorry._ He wanted to trust someone, so he betrayed them. _I don’t need it._ He wanted to make their pain go away, so he stabbed them with a knife. _I won't cry anymore. I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ . He liked them so he rejeced them. _I don’t need anything. I don’t need anything now._ He wanted to protect so them so he hurt them. _I’m sorry.  I don’t want anything. I’m sorry._   He couldn’t love anybody other than his mother. _I don’t need a mom._ He didn’t love his mother.  
  
So conceited. So conceited. So conceited. A child. Everyone saw through him. And he finally saw through himself. I have not accomplished anything. I have not grown one bit since my mother died.  
  
A selfish, vain question popped up in his mind.  
 _Why doesn’t anyone want me around?_  
He was talented. He was a prodigy. They all praised him. Not… not even one person wanted him. He was like that sand castle. No matter how hard he worked, or how stable he appeared, he could easily crmble apart like that sand castle. His entire body’s skin, muscle, bones, all like dry sand crumbling apart, fading away, because nobody needed him.  
  
He felt like crying.  
He couldn’t cry.  
  
 _“We’ll always be together. Hey, since we’ll always be together, it’s okay to do embarrassing things. It’s okay to cry, you can cry forever.”_ _  
  
_

“Oh, if it isn’t Matsuda-kun?”  
  
“Enoshima…” 

Junko got to see him when he cried from sheer stress of exams. She got to see the way his hands shook when he had been awake for three days straight and he could barely stand. She got to see him when he refused to sleep, and she had to wrestle him into bed. She didn’t even try anything, she didn’t kiss him or hug him, she just slept next to him all night holding him until he fell asleep. She saw the way he buried his face in her chest as if she was hiding from something, and how her heartbeat, the reminder she was still alive, safe, healthy was the only thing that soothed him.  
  
She saw all of that, but he didn’t want her to see this.  
It was embarrassing.  
Just let me die already.  
  
“Why do you sound so unhappy to see me?” She walked straight past Hinata, like she did not even see him. “You didn’t text me the words “I love you” every hour on the hour. How am I supposed to know if you love me or not?”  
  
“How about I text you ‘I hate you’.”  
  
Enoshima Junko bounced.  
As if gravity didn’t apply to her.  
Just being near her, he felt everything go upside down.  
  
“Matsuda-kun, there’s a guy I like. Are you jealous? You’re totally jealous now, right?”  
  
“Is that guy, me?”  
  
“It’s you!” Junko suddenly jumped and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him closer. There was only one person who worried about him. One person who needed her next to him. He always thought he was alone.  
  
He was so desperate he would even split his own rib and make an adam just for the company.  
  
“Oh, really? Well I hate that guy.”  
  
“Don’t talk bad about my senpai!”  
  
“You have really terrible taste in men. No wonder you’re such a trashy slut.” 

When she was next to him, he remembered that the two of them were the only two people on earth. It was no wonder why Junko always acted so loud, so brash with no regard for others. They didn’t exist in their world. They weren’t allowed in their eden.  
  
“Huh? Who’s the rando?” Junko suddenly flipped from oblivious to inquisitive. When she looked at Hinata he felt thoroughly uncomfortable being observed so closely.“He’s just… some guy.”

“Uhhh, sorry I didn’t know you had a date today, Matsuda-kun.” Hinata sounded almost disappointed as he made up an excuse to leave.  
  
“Gosh, Matsuda-kun it’s been forever.”  
  
“It’s been one day.”  
  
“That’s like forever in Junko time. Every minute you spend without me must be agony.”  
  
“No, agony is being with you.”  
  
“Hey, who was that? Who? Who? who? “ Junko changed tracks and started to poke him in the cheek.  
  
“He isn’t from the main school.”  
  
“Are you getting into human trials? Awe, is he your cute widdle guinea pig?”  
  
“Of course not. He’s just a friend.”  
  
Junko suddenly started to choke. She acted like she was dying, and dramatically flailed before Matsuda caught her and steadied her. He regretted that instantly, because she used that as an excuse to lean against him. He drew lines in the sand and she trampled all over them, because she didn’t care at all. She had no regard for other people, she didn’t even want to understand them. She didn’t think about people’s feelings at all. She just wanted. She wanted, and wanted, and wanted, but he thought that was fine as long as she wanted him.  
  
“A friend? Matsuda-kun made a friend? Matsuda-kun’s finally so popular! I’m going to date the most popular boy in school. I was so, so worried because my Matsuda-kun doesn’t play along well with others.”  
  
“Don’t talk about me like I’m stupid kid. Especially when you’re the one with the stupid head. Stupidhead.”  
  
Those eyes.  
As long as he could captivate those eyes he didn’t care about anyone else.  
She looked at him like he was real, and that was enough.  
  
“Well, I don’t really care about your social life at all. Matsuda-kun thinks he’s so original, so cool, pushing other people away with a bad attitude when he secretly wants them close. Like he’s not like every other angsty teenager on earth. Like get over yourself already.”  
  
“Hey…”  
  
“But, I just want you to know I’ll always be rooting for you, okay?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I was trying to be serious!”  
  
“Since when?” 

There were no boundaries between them. They just didn’t exist. When Junko pushed at him, he just pulled away. It was like they were two halves of the same person. They always unconsciously moved to accommodate each other. Matsuda stepped back, and Junko got in his face. “For me what you see is what you get. I just wear flashy clothes and act out to get attention. I’m not a huge deal. I’m not as smart as you, and I don’t try to help people like you do. You’re always getting caught up in my selfishness, so… so, what can a gyaru’s girl gonna do?”  
  
Junko stomped the ground with her boot. Matsuda thought he could feel the earth shaking for a moment.  
  
“I’m not gonna let anybody else give you a hard time but me! I’m the only one allowed to make Matsuda-kun’s life miserable! If this school doesn’t want you, then this whole place is trash. It really is a shame your talent isn’t recognized what for it’s worth, Matsuda-kun. You’ll never make it if you just got at ‘em from the front. You gotta attack from all sides. You’ve gotta make a splash if you wanna get anywhere.”  
  
She was the exact opposite of Komaeda who lived keeping his head down trying to be content with being a nobody.  
  
“Yeah, you’re my favorite misery.”  
  
Matsuda suddenly wanted a cigarette.  
That was what being with Junko was like.  
Highly addictive.  
Poisonous.  
Matsuda’s motto was if the food has been poisoned then lick the whole plate.  
Some part of his brain must have seen the warning signs.  
He knew this was a bad idea.  
He did it anyway.  
The one sickness he would succumb to over and over again.  
  
“...Or something. I’ve been thinking of you a lot lately, so I figured I’d just say what’s on my mind!”  
  
“You don’t hide your feelings at all, do you?”  
  
“Nope! Why would I try to be sneaky? Sneaky people don’t get attention. I hate it when I don’t get attention, Matsuda-kun! Hey, hey, why aren’t you paying attention to me right now? How can you be staring off into space when Junko’s the brightest star in your sky!”  
  
“You should hide your feelings a little more. They’re annoying.”  
  
She beat her hands playfully against his chest.  
Junko suddenly noticed that his tie was crooked.  
She fell silent. There were times that Junko got so quiet, and focused so intensely that she scared him. It was like all of the life drained out of her at once. She worked untied, and then redid his tie, and pulled it tight around his neck. He imagined just for a moment she was holding a noose instead. Junko straightened out his collar, and her hands lingered on his chest.  
  
Whenever they were alone for any period of time her hands found their way to his body.  
She rarely went further than that.  
It’s like she was happy enough just marking her territory.  
  
Junko suddenly grabbed his ear, and bent it in the wrong direction.  
  
“Ow, what the hell was that for?”  
  
“I thought it’d be fun. What if I ripped your ear off, and gave it back to you as a present, wouldn’t that be cute?”  
  
“Like, wouldn’t it be weird if I started acting like a psycho bitch all of a sudden? Tee, hee, hee…”  
  
“When I’m with Matsuda-kun, I can’t help but have fun. I never want to be apart from him. I want to keep playing more, and more,” Her red tipped  fingers climbed up his chest like a spider would, before she ghosted a touch at his face. She stopped just short of touching him, and recoiled as if in pain. “But… what if you… What if Matsuda-kun actually hates it?”  
  
“Junko, why are you acting this way-”  
  
“Look, look! My normal self is here! My selfishness! I can’t read the atmosphere at all!” Junko suddenly changed like flipping a switch, she became electric, buzzing about him, grabbing onto his arm and pulling onto him again. It was like a one sided dance.  
  
“Something like that, right? That’s how I should act, right?”

Junko’s mood swings had been getting worse and worse lately. He saw the same symptoms in Komaeda, but he convinced himself that there could be nothing wrong with her brain. Nothing would ever go wrong with Junko’s brain, because if it did, if she ever became sick, he would cure her.  
  
Junko, Komaeda, Hinata.  
This time was different. He wasn’t that kid anymore.  
This time he was not going to lose a single one of them.  
  
He really thought that as he held onto Junko, and listened to her complain in a low voice about her headaches returning again.   
Time, time, time.   
Technically they were not touching. On a molecular level their was probably some small space between them as they approached one another. Even pressed up against each other, their would be a small infinity of space between them. It was impossible for them to interact, but, he wanted to keep her in his arms, his little piece of infinity. He wanted to keep approaching her forever as the distance got smaller and smaller between them. 

 

🧸

 

Matsuda hated the thought of losing Hinata, but far worse than that was the idea of someone else performing the operation. He didn’t want Hinata to be anybody else’s monster. If it was him everything would work out fine.  
  
He knew Hinata’s ego was fragile.  
He could be the one who protected him. 

Matsuda finally realized why Hinata worried him so much. Why he could not leave such a person alone. He had the same look as Komaeda, suffering a fatal wound, living but they’re dead.  
  
They both were the type that could crumble easily, like sand castles.  
He was not a kid playing in the sand anymore. He wasn’t going to let them get stomped on.  
  
Hinata’s eyes sparkled when Matsuda told him.  
They shone like stars.  
Komaeda and Hinata, both of them wanted to be stars.  
But they didn’t realize, stars crumble, they fall apart, just like everything else.  
And when they do all that’s left behind is a hole.  
  
There should be something there,but it’s just a hole.  
  
“I’m finally gonna join the main course. I’ll be your classmate, Matsuda-kun. I’ll be able to talk to you every day.”

 _That is if you’re still you._ Matsuda bit down hard on his tongue to stop himself.  
  
“Umm… Aren’t you going to insult me? It’s weird when you don’t.”  
  
“You insult yourself just by living.”  
  
“I’ll have a talent, just like you. They said after the procedure there’s no problem with me joining the main course, it doesn’t even matter that I didn’t get there the same way that everybody else did. I’ll finally be with everyone.”  
  
Komaeda had said the same thing to Matsuda so many times.  
Every time he meddled, and pissed someone off.  
He tried to explain himself to Matsuda. _I want to be with everyone else in my class._  
Matsuda thought the other kids in Komaeda’s class were self involved assholes who treated him like crap, but Komaeda liked them so much.  
  
“Hinata, do you really, truly, believe that?”  
  
“I’ve already agreed. I signed all the paperwork, and everything.”  
  
“Hinata, calm down and actually think about something for once in your life.”  
  
“I don’t have any concrete details but I’m pretty confident it’ll all be okay, cause you’ll be part of it, right? Matsuda, you’re the super high school level neurologist! So I’m sure everything will turn out fine.”  
  
Whenever Matsuda complained about the treatments not working.  
Komaeda would show him that same smile.  
And then reach for his hand.  
Komaeda always acted so unfamiliar with other people, like he had never seen another person’s hand before.  
He locked their digits together in an awkward way.  
  
Hinata’s eyes.  
Spin, spin, spinning.  
Matsuda felt vertigo. Nausea.  
  
“I mean, you’re a member of the main school. Everybody talks about you, they really think you’re going places after this, right? I’m the total opposite. If I wasn’t in the Kamukura project you would have met me just once, and then completely forgotten about me. But now, I get to become the school’s hope.”  
  
I just want to help. Komaeda begged him.  
  
Hinata was sweating. His breathing was haggard, his whole face red. His expression looked like it was splitting at the seams, half laughing, half crying.  
  
"Maybe I don't need to help everybody. Nothing makes me happier than the thought of giving you a little hope, Matsuda."   
  
I just want to help one person.  
  
“I don’t care what it is, all I need is one. I just want a talent to call my own.”  
  
Hinata looked like two people in one.   
The person he saw himself as.  
The person he was.  
They were just far too different.  
His eyes were so crossed they were looking in two directions.  
  
He realized then he couldn’t so no to either one of them.  
He couldn’t say no to Komaeda. He couldn’t say no to Hinata.  
Hinata was practically placing his heart in Matsuda's hands.   
Matsuda couldn't give it back, or throw it away. He couldn't bear to.   
  
“We’ll be classmates. We’ll eat together at school every day. You can come bother me in the neurology lab.”  
  
Matsuda lied.   
  
Matsuda knew they would quarantine him and keep him for observation. They did not want to go out of their way to create an artificially talented student just to have him be exactly like all the other students. They didn’t want to make Hinata’s dreams come true. They weren’t doing this to some reserve course student out of the goodness of their hearts. They picked Hinata, because a kid from a poor family, with no friends, would vanish if the experiment went wrong. Even if the experiment went right, they wanted a hope that would bow down and take orders. They wanted  a servant they had made with their own hands to be at their beck and call.  
  
There was no way he would be allowed to see anyone.  
Even if Hinata survived the story.  
Big If.  
They would hide him away from the rest of the world to keep him safe.  
  
 _But I’ll be there._ _  
__I’ll be gentle._ _  
My hands were made for you._  
  



	55. INTERMISSION ONE

In a room full of butterflies, Komaeda was babbling to himself. Komaeda felt himself being tickled all over. It was a pleasant, but unfamiliar feeling.   
  
“Matsuda-kun? Ah, could it be…? Did you take some time out of your busy day to bring some food to little old me?”   
  
Komaeda felt perfectly comfortable.   
Even tied down to the bed.   
Perhaps it was better. He remembered the last time he had been tied up like this, in a dark basement somewhere. He disappeared from everybody’s lives and nobody noticed. That was a good thing, because nobody was hurt by his bad luck while he was gone. He always thought about this. What if he was the only one who suffered from bad luck. If he could make it so he experienced all the bad luck in the world and it never affected others he would do so in a second.   
  
He didn’t hate his luck. He hated that he was a clumsy idiot who always hurt everyone around him without even trying to. He would gladly suffer alone for the sake of everyone else. That’s what he wanted. He thought so anyway, but… suffering alone was lonely. Komaeda had forogtten how lonely it was, until just the moment that Matsuda appeared in his hospital room and came to visit him. 

 

A voice interrupted Matsuda’s story. 

 

(Ill Girl: You have such a type Matsuda-kun, it’s scary.)  
  
(Matsuda: Don’t interrupt. And what’s so scary about it.)   
  
(Ill Girl: Look at how things turn out for the people you fall for.)   
  
(Matsuda: Even if it’s completely factually true, just saying it out loud makes you an asshole.)   
  
(Ill Girl: Please never fall for me. I’m not interested in you. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression I was. Was I being a tease? Oh my, oh my, that’s improper.)   
  
(Matsuda: Like there’s anything to fall for anyway! You’d need to be physically attractive, or you know have an actual personality. I think you’re completely safe from the disaster that is Matsuda’s love life.)   
  
“Wow, I’m so happy! As you can see. This hospital has been showing me their full hospitality, they’re so considerate of a troublesome patient like me.”   
  
Komaeda said staring at Matsuda through half lidded eyes, his entire face a mess. “Huh, what happened? Your face looks kind of scary. Are you mad? Oh, even though Matsuda-kun’s doing his best to heal me, I got hospitalized again, of course you’re mad.”

  
Just a week ago, Komaeda had been lying on the floor rambling contentedly while Matsuda did paperwork and observed the effects of the medication he prescribed. Everything Komaeda said gave him a headache, but Komaeda was his favorite source of migraines. He listened and responded back occasionally without looking up from his work.   
  
“You know Hanamura-kun is worrying about his mother being sick. He works hard every day. Even though they’re in pain, there are still people who can work hard. All I ever managed to do was make my mother cry.”   
  
“God, do you have self esteem problems or what? Do you really think that Hanamura-kun of all people is better than you? Really? Him?” 

 

“All of my classmates are such good people. I would do anything to be able to help at least one of them.” He would die for them. That was such an easy thing to say. Dying was much harder, more lonely, that he ever thought it would be. “But, none of them need my help. It’s no wonder they all ignore me.”  
  
“They all ignore you because your classmates are a bunch of self-involved assholes. Everyone at this school is.” Matsuda said, leaning back in his chair, bending his spine all the way back. “They all think they’re so fucking special.”   
  
“But they are special. Matsuda-kun, you always act like you don’t see how kind, and caring you are and that makes me sad. When tragedy strikes there are two sorts of people, only two. There are those who think of themselves. They’re weak, and only have the capability to think of themselves. They’re the helpless. Then there are those capable of thinking of others. They help.  Do you know what a miracle it is to suffer everything you’ve suffered through and still be able to care about others?”   
  
“Ewe. Quit complimenting me. If I like myself for even a second I might as well die. If I start to get a big head, or any kind of ego, please stab me with a scalpel until my head pops.”   
  
“You’re someone who gives to others, all I do is take. That’s why I admire you and all of my classmates. Matsuda-kun, you turn your suffering into something beautiful. You’re better than what hurt you.”   
  
“You really like other people, huh?”   
  
“Oh?”  Komaeda did not really expect him to be listening. “It’s more of a one-sided admiration. I can’t even imagine anyone might like me back. Don’t you like people, Matsuda-kun? That’s why you always try so hard to help them.”   
  
“I hate idiots.”   
  
“Ahahahaha, of course you do.”   
  
“Everyone in the world is an idiot except for me. It’s so hard being the only sane person in the freak show that’s Hope's Peak Academy. Your classmates are freaks, and so are you, so you should fit in just fine.”   
  
_Matsuda-kun is so naive,_ Komaeda said between laughter, that sparkled, and trickled out like water. “That’s my Matsuda-kun. You’re like an angel. It’s like you were made to take care of me.” 

 

That was what he always thought when he saw Matsuda in white. White suited him more than it did anyone else. His  wings were soft, pillowy. Komaeda who was terrified of everything, felt safe, felt like he belonged there, underneath Matsuda’s wings. The two of them could hide away from the rain. Komaeda thought he was fine far away from others, hiding in the shadows his entire life, but Matsuda was a light that did not blind, nor burn him. He just felt enveloped, warmed. 

 

He had never thought it would be okay to be near such a person. Matsuda had no idea why Komaeda was always smiling around him. He hadn’t done anything to help Komaeda yet. His best efforts were worth nothing, the boy only got worse and now he was in a hospital room. Happy days were like butterfly’s wings in a child’s hand, slowly being ripped apart. The butterfly wasn’t even aware of it as it died. Junko’s eyes looked on in curiousity. Komaeda, Komaeda, Komaeda, fading away just like mother. _You’re helping me._ He wasn’t. He wasn’t helping anyone. 

  
Eighteen years, and kind no longer.   
Matsuda cried to god, but couldn’t get stronger.   
He reached out his hands to hold onto Komaeda, but he couldn’t touch a pretty smile like that, surely it would break. 

 

Junko told Matsuda once _there’s nothing sure in this world. There’s no need to be upset, Yasuke-kun, the sand castle was going to fall down eventually so who cares if I kicked it down? You get so emotional about everything, I really don’t get it._ That was what he felt like, right now. It feels like the whle world is as fragile and threatening to topple over, and shatter to pieces at the slightest nudge. But In reality, that isn’t the world, but himself. Matsuda was the fragile one. Kirigiri, Hinata, Komaeda, Junko, they all needed him but he was too fucking fragile to help any of them.   
  
His workload had gotten too large with Kamukura project and Komaeda. He had agreed to split Komaeda’s time again between Gekkougahara’s therapy, and Matsuda’s treatment with the goal of getting his suspension lifted once he got better. As a result of that, Gekkougahara had ordered Komaeda to be hospitalized.   
  
“It’s my own fault. I told her about how I was feeling like I could die for the hope of others, and Gekkougahara was just looking at me. They’re monitoring me to make sure I don’t commit suicide. She really is a good doctor who cares about other people, just like you Matsuda-kun!”   
  
No matter how he was treated Komaeda would just make excuses for other people and continue to blame himself. 

  
“This is embarrassing to ask Matsuda-kun, but ah… Will you feed me? I can’t eat it on my own, you know since my hands are all tied up.”   
  
Matsuda picked up a spoonful of rice, and watched as Komaeda slowly moved his lips around the spoon and gratefully swallowed it all down. “I hope you fucking choke on it and die.” Matsuda grumbled.   
  
🧸

 

 **July, Hope’s Peak Goes on Summer Break.** **  
****July, Komaeda is hospitalized for the first of several times.** **  
****July, Matsuda was introduced to Tsumiki Mikan for the first time.**

 

“I fucking hate her.” Matsuda said, the moment he pulled Junko away from Mikan after their introduction.   
  
“It’s not nice to talk about people behind their backs, Matsuda-kun!”   
  
“I’ll say it to her face as well. Hey, Psycho-Nurse get over here! Number one, she’s not even a real nurse. Number two, someone with clumsy hands like that is going to hurt a patient.”   
  
“Don’t you think you’re being a little mean? Matsuda-kun hates everyone. Big surprise. Can you get a new personality trait already? Ugh, your utter lack of social skills  is sooooo fricking adorable.”   
  
“If she can’t handle me being a little mean to her how is she going to handle a patient! Taking care of others is a stressful job, and you always have to put others needs before you’re own. Her patients aren’t going to thank her. They’re going to whine, and complain, and if her fragile fucking ego can’t take it she should find a different line of work-”   
  
Junko suddenly cut him off by kissing him. It was suffocating. He could hardly breathe. He was sucking her down, the same way he sucked the nicotine from a cigarette. He had a feeling she had done so just to shut him up, but he did not mind either way.   
  
If Junko wanted to kiss, he would kiss her.   
If Junko wanted a friend, he would be her friend.   
Whatever Junko wanted. 

  
He opened his eyes just a crack, and saw that Junko had never closed her eyes the whole time. She was watching.   
Her eyes coldly observed every detail of his face, taking in all of him.   
He felt like, in her hands he was something dazzling.   
Preciously, she cherished him.   
She held onto him, like tucking away a glittering pebble she found in the sandbox. 

  
He wanted to keep kissing her. He wanted to remain in the sandbox with her. She drew back eventually, but still held his face in her hands.   
  
“It’s okay Matsuda-kun, you don’t have to pretend to be angry. I understand. Even if nobody understands you, and Matsuda-kun doesn’t understand himself. You don’t have to explain it because I know, I already know everything Matsuda-kun wants to say.”   
  
“How can such a dumb bitch, be such a smartass?”   
  
“I dunno, I’m just talented.”   
  
“Kiss me like that again, and I’m going to bite off your tongue. I’m serious. I’m not pretending to be anything, maybe I’m just an asshole, has anybody ever thought of that?”   
  
“Matsuda-kun, you’re only angry because you care. I don’t know how you do it. You genuinely care about others. It’s painful isn’t it? I feel like every time you get involved with me, I only end up hurting you. I mean you hate me, don’t you?”   
  
“You’re just an ugly, empty headed girl. Of course I hate you.”   
  
(Ill Girl: I’m a poisonous snake and I’m going to bite you. I’m a poisonous snake and I’m going to bite you. Ow, ow. The poisonous snake bit me. How could I have possibly seen this coming?)   
  
(Matsuda: Love makes you stupid.)   
  
(Ill Girl: Oh, then it’s a good thing after all that nobody’s ever loved me.)   
  
(Ill Girl: How long are you going to dwell on that insufferable woman.)   
  
(Matsuda: What are you getting all worked up for? Is the baby feeling her first emotion? Hey, hey, hey, your face is going all red.)   
  
(Ill Girl: Heavens, you’re insufferable. It’s just a fever. I hope it kills me faster, so I don’t have to talk to you much longer.)   
  
(Matsuda: I’m just trying to help. Jeez. Are you this much of a bitch with everyone you meet or am I just special.)   
  
(Ill Girl: Of course you’re special. You’re the worst doctor I’ve ever met.)   
  
Junko brought her nose close to Matsuda’s. She was like a rabbit nuzzling against him. He was surprised how well their faces fit together, like his tall, stalky, body that was all legs was the perfect complement to hers.   
  
Junko giggled all to herself.   
Just like always, he had no idea what she was laughing about. “If only Matsuda-kun loved me, then I might really be saved.” 

 

 _She’s relying on me._   
Matsuda’s eyes turned back as he looked at Mikan in the other room. The angle of his vision was strange, like the angle the camera might take in a horror movie.   
  
“If you had never met me, you’d be so much happier, Matsuda-kun.”   
  
_That’s not true at all._ He wanted to say.   
  
“You should just throw someone like me away, but Matsuda-kun never throws anything away. You act like you hate Tsumiki-senpai, but now that you’ve met her, you won’t stop yourself from getting involved.”   
  
Junko ran her fingers through his hair again. It reminded him so much of the way his mother used to do it.   
  
“I’m such a vapid, empty headed, selfish girl don’t you think? Do you think I’m cute? Oh, what does that matter. You hate me. You definitely hate me. I’ve just got nothing going on in my head. But. but. Even if you hate me, I’m really happy I met Matsuda-kun.”   
  
You take care of everyone.   
Everyone is so happy to have you in their lives.   
It was because he had talent he could heal people. 

A chronic case of Florence Nightingale Syndrome.  
Matsuda had been nursing this disease in his heart his entire life.   
It was feversish, it was dizzying, he was nauseous, but he was in love. He was so sure he was.   
Utterly captivated by her childish innocence, mischievousness, and beauty.   
Enoshima Junko perfectly played her own “role” of the beautifully broken girl clinging to him.   
  
  
Junko’s fingers balled up the fabric of his shirt. “Tsumiki-senpai cares as much as you do, that’s why I’m so worried about her.”   
  
He was helping people, he was so sure of it.   
What did Komaeda call him?   
An angel.   
A person made to take care of others.   
  
Matsuda didn’t know yet.   
The difference between a demon and angel is merely the name we give it. 

 

🧸

 

 **End of July.** **  
****Kamukura project begins with Matsuda Yasuke as the chief operator, and Tsumiki Mikan as his assistant.**   
  


Matsuda was elbow deep in Hinata. He cut him apart over and over again. He had no idea how the surgeries were supposed to make him better. He kept lying. He kept saying the next surgery would be the last one. He kept watching the light slowly disappear from Hinata’s eyes because of him.   
  
Where as Hinata?   
He was fragmented, in pieces.   
He was cut apart, dissected.   
The world was supposed to be whole and put together, but he was in pieces. He saw cracks no one else saw, and he had more than anybody else. The world was like a puzzle begging for him to solve it. 

Piece  by piece.  
Matsuda cut parts of him away, and Hinata fragmented further.   
He would always wake up in a white bed, when it was over.   
He would always find a new missing piece.   
He would reach his hand up to the sky, only to watch it break into pieces.   
He tried to move his arm and it broke at the joints.   
He was like a fragile doll cmoing apart.   
He saw the pieces of his arm fall away. Disconnected from each other.   
All five fingers, his hand, his wrist, his upper arm, his elbow, his lower arm, his shoulder.   
They all broke apart and floated away from him.   
Even though they were no longer attached to him he could still feel them.   
All of the nerve endings sent wireless signals to his brains, screaming cries for help.   
He could feel himself being sliced apart. Every fresh incision sent a million nerves singing together in agony. 

 

 _What the hell is this?  Is this what happened to me? How did I get broken into pieces? Does this mean I’m dead? This is what death is like. I feel like I’m alive, but…how can I be alive I’ve been chopped into bits. I don’t remember anything. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?_ _  
_ _  
_ _I’ve got no clue. Don’t even know my own name._ _  
_ _Shit._ _  
_ _Ah._

 

Even though he was broken into pieces could still manipulate his body. His consciousness was floating somewhere outside of him, but his body still obeyed him the same as ever, like a fresh corpse puppet.   
  
He had to piece himself back together. Hinata had to solve the jigsaw puzzle of himself. 

 

 _I’m in pieces, but they’re connected. Was I broken just so I could put myself back together? Who would do that to me. I’m making too many assumptions. For all I know I came apart on my own. I can’t even be sure that putting myself back together is the right thing to do. No, this is right. I’m not supposed to be in pieces._   
  
His eyes slowly opened. He saw Matsuda, and then remembered himself again. Frankenstein had no name of his own. Frankenstein was the name of the doctor. The only name he had was Frankenstein’s monster. That was right, he was Matsuda’s monster.   
  
He reassessed the situation he was in, catching the reflection in one of the many mirrors.He remembered now. He was Hinata Hajime. Lately, he had started to develop a resistance to the anesthesia so they operated while he was still awake. Matsuda had cut off the top of his head, and to keep his hands occupied during the surgery they asked Hinata to play violin. 

He had stopped playing just for a moment because he lost himself. He picked up the bow, and started to play again. _I seem to be functional enough. Well, whatever._ The sound was a perfect reproduction of what he had heard earlier. It felt a little bit like a computer generated violin track.   
  
His playing wasn’t perfect.   
He wasn’t allowed to be have imperfections. If he had any left, Matsuda was going to operate on him again. Humans were full of imperfections, that was why Kamukura had to be something other than human.   
  
If you’re not human than you’re just a monster.   
Kamukura plucked the violin string again, hoping he would get it right this time. 

Both the violin and the bow fell out of his hands, as both of his arms went limp, and numb.   
When te violin fell, it broke open on the ground, and several of its strings snapped.   
It was the most beautiful sound Kamukura had ever heard.   
  
When Matsuda sewed the top of his head back on he was happy. He had played it perfectly. He was Matsuda’s perfect creation. So… why was he… why was he crying? Tears were a flaw. An imperfection. They leaked out through a crack in his face. 

 

“No, help me!” 

  
Hinata knocked the scissors away. He had bandages wrapped all around his head, covering one eye. He tore away at them, trying to free himself. Hinata tried to stand up, but his legs refused to obey the signals from his brain and he fell on the floor.   
  
Matsuda had sent the rest of the doctors away. It was him, and Mikan left in the room performing final after-surgery checkups. Hinata had waited until he was alone with Matsuda, because Matsuda was the only one he could trust. Matsuda was the only kind one.   
  
Matsuda moved to help him up, and Hinata grabbed onto his lower body wrapping himself around him.   
  
“I’m scared. I want to die. I don’t want to die.”   
  
There were two voices beginning to overlap in his head.   
Matsuda had melted two heads and mixed them together.   
He no longer knew if this was the voice of Hinata Hajime (Man) or Kamukura Izuru (God) he heard. Hearing the voice of god in his ears? He was clearly delusional. The ultimate therapist would say it was a clear case of the onset of schizophrenia at eighteen years old. A fractured psyche. A rift between his right and left brains. His thoughts were slow… and… distant. The right side could no longer communicate with the left. His two selves were in disagreement.   
  
Matsuda. Matsuda. Matsuda.   
Dressed in all white.   
Like an angel. 

  
If he had wings he would fly elsewhere. If he had wings he wanted to be anywhere else but here. Matsuda didn’t understand, because he had talent, he couldn’t possibly understand the sorrow of those without wings.   
  
God and is angel. He begged, pulling on Matsuda’s lab coat, dirtying his feathers with unclean hands. “No, no, no. Matsuda… I’m begging you, I want to die while I’m still me!”   
  
Matsuda did not say anything.   
Hinata pushed him away. He grabbed Mikan by the neck, and placed his scalpel against her throat. Just the other day the three of them had been playing cards together in the hospital room. Hinata had better days, normal days, that almost convinced Matsuda he was helping the other boy. That Hinata might actually get better.   
  
“K-k-kill me. Do it, or I’ll kill her.”   
  
“That’s a poorly thought out plan, dipshit. I thought these surgeries were supposed to make you smarter?”   
  
Now he saw Mikan blinking the tears out of her eyes. She closed her mouth, and didn’t cry for help. She had a look like _just let him do it._

 

Hinata just wanted his help.  
All Matsuda did was stick another needle in his neck and tranquilize him.   
He shouldn’t have done that.   
Hinata was afraid of needles now.   
  
Mikan waited until after they both moved Hinata back to his bed to start crying. She leaned her back against the wall and sunk all the way to the floor. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it. I can’t take it.”   
  
“You’re such an anxious mess you can’t get through one human conversation. Why the hell do you think you’d be able to survive here? Why don’t you take your, oh, I’m such a poor crybaby victim shit somewhere else.”   
  
“I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.”   
  
“Let me remind you, you volunteered for this. You practically begged me to take you into the project. Don’t act like you didn’t have a choice. Oh, you hate yourself? So does everybody else. Get over it.”

  
He was screaming at someone having a breakdown in front of him. Just like he got angry at Gekkogahara for doing. _It’s not your fault, Komaeda. The reason she yells at you is just because she doesn’t like you._ Was that why he was yelling at Mikan? He just didn’t like her. He waned her to feel bad to relieve a little bit of stress. _Some doctor you are._   
  
She’s getting upset because she cares.   
Matsuda reminded himself.   
This was what caring was, it was overwhelming.   
To take care of others you had to be strong enough to always put their needs first. Mikan only had such a low opinion of herself because she placed others so high.   
  
Matsuda felt the same way. He wanted to keep Junko locked away, like a princess in a tower. He had forgotten that the higher you build up towers the farther they fall.   
  
“It’s our fault. We’re doing this to him. What does it mean to be a nurse anyway? What does it mean to be a doctor? It isn’t someone that heals people so they can be killed over and over again.”   
  
Junko told him once people were wounded fatally.   
All they could do was die.   
His mother had a hole in her head. Her memories were falling out of her like sand through a sieve. Mikans’ choked sobbing, the ugly way she cried, how Matsuda wanted to cry with her but couldn’t.

  
He always treated Mikan like she was damaged.   
Wasn’t he the damaged one?   
He never cried like this no matter how much of Hinata’s blood got on his hand.   
He was a doctor whose body emitted a metallic thirst for blood.   
It was the normal thing to cry. It was natural. Why couldn’t he cry?   
Cutting apart Hinata felt like cutting apart himself.   
There was something fundamentally wrong with his brain now, he had cut in the wrong place.   
  
“Scalpels, needles, bandages. Those things aren’t for killing people. What kind of doctor are you? What kind of nurse am I? We’re just st-st-stabbing him again and again with medical tools.”   
  
“You’re not even a nurse.”   
  
“I know I’m like this. I’m sorry for annoying you so much. It can’t be helped. It can’t be helped but I’m like this, but… I wanted to help at least one person. If nobody wants to take care of me at least I could help take care of others…”   
  
Mikan just like Komaeda wanted to help others. He shouldn’t get angry at someone who wants to help.   
  
“W-when did it happen. W-when did we start killing him over and over-”   
  
“I’m not a murderer!” Matsuda kicked the wall next to her. He knew how much Mikan hated loud noises. He could not help himself. He would do anything to get her to stop crying. He even thought about punching her face until it was bloody, and her eyes swelled up so much no more tears would come out. God, he was so awful. “If you kill someone, that’s your own incompetence don’t blame me. Do you know why people always bully you? The same reason garbage attracts flies. You reek with it, you ask for it, always playing the victim. It’s all your fault. All of it. All of the bad things that happened to you in your life are simply because you weren’t strong enough at the time to deal with it. Stop begging others for help and help yourself.” 

  
“M-m-matsuda-kun, what if we can’t fix Hinata-kun…What if we’re just hurting him for no reason.”   
  
Even now after he said those horrible things, Mikan just worried about Hinata. 

 _I’m not a murderer. I’m not a murderer. I’m not a murderer._   
“I’m helping him.”   
_Junko said so. Komaeda said so. I’m always helping them, that’s why they need me._   
“I’m his doctor. I would never hurt him.”   
  


🧸

 

 **December 23rd, Junko and Mikan go on a Date at the Hospital.**   
  
_I’m not a murderer._ _  
_ _I’m not killing him._ _  
_ _I’m helping._ _  
_ _Just let me help you._   
  
Those thoughts swirled in Matsuda’s head making it impossible for him to sleep at night. When Junko called him he had already been awake. He pulled his white coat on. He didn’t even need to get dressed, he had been lying down wearing exactly the same thing he wore yesterday, and the day before that.   
  
When he got there Junko immediately threw his arms around her neck. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, like she was hiding something from him. He had never seen Junko act this way before in her life. She was like an idiot that always laughed everything off. She always acted like nothing in the world was real to her, like it had no effect on her.   
  
He could feel her heart beating, through the hollow cage of her body leaned against his.   
  
He finally saw.   
Mikan wearing a nurse’s uniform soaked in blood. A male nurse was on the floor, stabbed over and over again with a scalpel. A scalpel wasn’t a tool used to murder others. His throat slit, his blood everywhere. 

 

Matsuda interrupted his own story. 

  
(Matsuda: Oh, maybe I shouldn’t be describing something so graphic.)   
  
(Ill Girl: It’s been bothering me for awhile, but can you please stop acting like I’m a child?)   
  
(Matsuda: Oh that’s right, you’re in your twenties. Then I guess I should look at you like you’re an adult instead.)   
  
(Ill Girl: Please don’t look at me at all.)   
  
(Matsuda: Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to look away.)   
  
(Ill Girl: …?)   
  
(Matsuda: Because you fucking smell like a dead dog. It’s so distracting. It’s all I can think about right now.  I know you were dead for a few minutes there, but do you have to smell like you’re dead.)

(Ill Girl: ...)

(Matsuda: What's wrong? I thought you had a sassy retort for everything.)

  
(Ill Girl: No, that's you.  You really have no idea how to speak to other human beings do you?)   
  
“W-w-we came to visit Komaeda-senpai, and… when no one else was around that nurse did something I can’t even say, just thinking about it fills me up with despair.” If their bodies were cages, Junko was thrashing her head against the bars. “I want to laugh. Is it weird that I want to laugh? I’m a weird girl. Matsuda-kun, listen to me. Listen to me. I don’t want to lie to you. I’m so fucked up. I’m such a fucked up girl.”   
  
“Y-you’re in shock. What’s going on, everybody stop acting insane for five fucking seconds. Oh wait, that’s impossible, because this is Hope’s Fucking Peak, the island of misfit toys.”    
  
Nothing Junko said made any sense to him. His brain failed to register them as words. Mikan was acting like everything was fine.   
  
“What have we hereee? Komaeda…?”   
  
Komaeda laying on the bed, cracked his eyes open.   
  
“Did you wakey-pooo?”   
  
He started to crawl away from her.   
  
“You need to get plenty of rest. I am going to have my hands full, now that your other nurse quit.” 

Komaeda suddenly pulled his long legs back, and kicked her out of his bed before she could crawl on top of him. Failure. Vulgarity. A subdued sense of smell and disgust. Depression and comtempt. All of those things seemed to mix together in his eyes as he looked down at her.   
  
“Dirty. You’re so dirty. Don’t touch me.” 

 _Komaeda. Don’t do that. You’re gentle._   
  
“The moment you thought it was acceptable to hurt someone you ceased to become a nurse. You’re a mistake. It was a mistake that anyone ever called you talented.”

 _Komaeda. You wanted to be friends with her._   
  
“S-sorry.”   
  
“Don’t apologize! You’re insulting me by apologizing.”   
  


_Komaeda, that nurse was abusing you and she just wanted to help you._ _  
_ _She’s just like you, she just wants to help._   
  
“Heeeeeeelp! Doctors, somebody help me! She’s a fucking psycho. This is all her fault. Someone’s dead and it’s all her fault. This isn’t even a hospital anymore, it’s a graveyard-”   
  
Komaeda hit the call button again and again determined to rat her out. Before he could, Matsuda grabbed him, and covered his mouth with his hand. He had no idea how to get the other boy to stop screaming. Junko, Mikan, Komaeda all in the same room pulling him in three different directions. Junko was right, he couldn’t throw Mikan away. She was always right about him.   
  
“Shut up and let someone help you for once.”   
  
Komaeda bit the back of his hand.   
Then, with Matsuda’s blood in his mouth, Komaeda laughed. When they were kids, Junko and him used to catch butterflies together. When Matsuda asked why she liked tearing their wings off so much, Junko just laughed at him. Komaeda’s laughter sounded exactly the same.   
  
“You really think you’re helping? That’s amazing, amazing, amazing. Matsuda-kun is so amazing!” Komaeda’s sickly smile spread across his face. “Do you really think it helps sick people to treat them like they’re not sick? Do you know why Gekkougahara had me tied up like this? It’s because she knows I’m sick, unlike you.”   
  
Komaeda brought his hands to his chest. He had a terrible coughing fit, coughed blood, and spat it in Matsuda’s face. “I get it. You couldn’t help your mommy. But I’m not her. Quit acting like you’re helping me. I’m already dying, and losing my mind, and you don’t care about that at all. You’re not here to relieve my pain, you’re just here because you feel guilty.”

  
Komaeda tried to wipe the blood from his mouth but it kept pouring out.   
  
“You feel guilty, and you blame yourself, and never once do you think about me. Then you get angry at me for not accepting your help when I never once asked for it.”   
  
Komaeda wheezed, his whole body struggling to breathe.   
  
“A person died, do you even care? Ahah, ahahahaha. I’m a brain damaged patient and somehow I’m more aware of the reality of the situation than you are. Tsumiki-san isn’t a little girl crying out for help, she’s a fucking murderer.”   
  
Komaeda finally looked at. His eyes were swirling and Matsuda felt himself slowly sinking into the black holes in the two pits of his eyes.   
  
“Do you know how it feels to be told you’re not sick, when you are? No, you can’t possibly know what it feels like. You don’t know how others feel. That’s why you can cut them apart like it’s nothing at all to you.”   
  
He wanted to relieve their pain.   
He didn’t even know what pain was.   
  
“You’re my angel, Matsuda-kun. Did you feel flattered when I said that? Did it make you feel like a good person? You really are my angel, but if everyone dies around you that just makes you an angel of death.”   
  
Everyone was turning against him.   
There was only one person left clinging to him.   
No matter what, when everything was falling apart Junko did not let go of his arm at that moment.   
  
“You’re too beautiful, Matsuda-kun. You have no idea what sick people feel like.” 

_I can’t trust them. The more you trust, the greater the force of betrayal. You break, and you crumble, and you can never be back again. I can’t crumble like a sand castle. She still needs me. As long as one person still needs me._   
  
He told Junko to go home.   
He drugged Komaeda up until he passed out.   
He cleaned the whole scene up with Mikan. He made her strip off her clothes. He said nothing as she waited for him to shower. In the morning he had cleaned the murder up, and was contemplating how to get rid of the body. He could not let go of Mikan now, as long as she stayed involved with the Kamukura project he would be able to cover for her. The school would not expel her, or get rid of her, if she was in the know.   
  
**December 31st, Hinata Hajime dies.**

Mikan had stopped crying after they finished with Hinata’s operations. She got giggly now, bubbly even. In her own way though, Mikan was watching over Hinata more than anyone else did. It made it impossible for Matsuda to hate her.  
  
Besides, Matsuda would be a hypocrite.   
His own heart started to race in anticipation of the surgery.   
He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He never slept these days, the only time he felt truly awake and present inside his own body was when he was about to cut Hinata open again. 

Hinata’s hair had grown so long it reached to the bottom of his neck. His antennae started to droop. He had gotten so smart by now, that before every surgery he consulted with Matsuda, and talked down to him like he knew better.   
  
Lately though, his progression had hit a wall. He started to plateau in his learning aptitude. Every human had their limits, but Hinata wasn’t allowed to have limits, he had to become a god.   
  
Hinata looked over his own charts, and then handed the clipboard back to Yasuke. “I’m not seeing any obvious abnormalities.”   
  
“What the fuck does abnormal mean anymore? We’re far beyond abnormal psychology when it comes to you.”   
  
“It’s a puzzle, Matsuda. Puzzles are meant to be solved. It’s so boring when they get solved, but... “   
  
“A puzzle?”   
  
“Yes, let’s say you were a toymaker, and I was a toy made of many different individual parts. In order to refurbish me, you place those parts out one by one, and replace them with new parts. As you slowly take out pieces of Hinata Hajime, and replace them with Kamukura Izuru, at what point do I become Kamukura Izuru? That’s the puzzle I’m trying to solve right now.”   
  
“Quit being so philosophical. Oi, Oi, Mr. Robot. You’re designed to do whatever the steering committee wants you to do. They give me orders and I remodel your brain. Whatever. Check up over. I’m sick of pretending to be a doctor.”   
  
“Matsuda.”   
  
“I’d like to know more details about the changes you’re making to me. Can you tell me?”   
  
Matsuda was in the middle of storming off dramatically like a child. He hated being the adult in the room. “That’s confidential, Kamukura Izuru.”   
  
“I am Hinata Hajime.”   
  
“Hinata Hajime is long dead.”   
  
“He is not dead.” 

“He wanted to die, so I gave him what he wanted.” 

 _I’m happy that I met you._ Junko told him. 

 _I’m glad you’re here._ Komaeda told him.   
He was helping, because he believed he was helping he murdered in cold blood.   
  
“What happens when you take away someone’s preferences, emotions, beliefs, their entire personality? Can you really call that person the same as before?”   
  
“So you do know what the paradox of the ship of Theseus is. You were just pretending to be crude and obtuse. Matsuda thinks that makes him a unique personality, but really he’s just the same as everyone else.”   
  
“Oh, I guess you’re an expert in psychology now. Can you tell me, why I’m such a masochist? I’m talking to you even though it’s physically painful. Can you tell me? Pretty please?”   
  
“I’m just curious. At what point do you believe I ceased to be Hajime Hinata? Was it when his preferences were erased? When his emotions were dulled? Or perhaps, is it just out of your own boring sense of guilt…” 

 

Hinata looked at Matsuda with completely blank eyes.  
Matsuda could not see anything reflected in them.   
  
“Ah. I’ve solved the puzzle. How dull. As long as my memories are not totally removed, I won’t be able to become Kamukura Izuru. That’s why the project is stalling. The memories are merely rendered inaccessible inside of me. If you went looking, you would find them waiting for you. Unlike your mother’s condition, you could easily restore them…”   
  
“Hinata…”   
  
He could bring Hinata back totally.   
Unlike his mother, he could bring those memories back.   
  
“COnsider the following. What if despite being inacapable of expressing himself, Hajime Hinata still lives within me? What if he’s listening in on this very conversation?”   
  
“No. Even if that were the case, you’re a different person now. There’s no way two idiots would fit in the same head.”   
  
“That’s true. Theseus’ ship has been replaced.”   
  
Matsuda reached forward. He grabbed raven locks of hair, and pushed them back from his forehead. There were horrible stitches across the center of his forehead. Matsuda might as well have stuck bolts into the neck of his monster. “Grow your hair out even more. The scar on your forehead really sticks out. Just looking at it makes my skin crawl.”   
  
“As you wish. Frankenstein was scared of his creation when he first saw it, because it was ugly.”   
  
“We get it. You’re smart. You read books now. God, shut up.”   
  
“Matsuda, you know what you have to do. You are merely avoiding the subject. I have no idea how the human mind can come up with so many different ways of running away from what should be the obvious truth. Perhaps you’d solve the problem if you humans just thought things through like I did…”   
  
“Oh great, you’re developing a god complex now. That’s always a good sign.”   
  
“Matsuda-kun, I hold an especially high level of faith in the talent of a super high school level nuerologist. So, I believe it will all work out. Remove all memories of Hinata Hajime, wipe the slate clean completely. Destroy them so not trace of him remains. Then, the project will be able to continue.”   
  
Matsuda realized as a doctor he could heal Hinata, try to bring him back to the way he was.   
But he was equally capable of hurting him.   
The only difference between an angel and a demon was what they were called.   
  
“Please, Matsuda-kun. You’re the only one I can trust.”   
  
Trust.   
That person trusts allies and never suspects them.   
That person apologizes to others no matter how many times they’re hurt by them.   
There’s no such thing as an innocent person.   
He didn’t believe such a boy could exist. That was why he broke tahat thing.   
He completely stomped on it like a sand castle. The fraud that is liking someone else, the powder that is trust, he kicked the sand castle down before it would fall on its own.   
No choice. No choice. There’s no coming back from this.   
Junko was it this fun when you stomped all over the sand castle? 

  
Hinata offered his hand and asked Matsuda to erase his memories.   
Matsuda knew he would never forgive himself if he took that hand.   
That was why he did it. So he couldn’t be forgiven.   
As he curled his fingers up in Hinata’s palm. As he tried to hold onto sand that was disappearing between his fingers. 

“It should be easy, since you hate me, Matsuda-kun.” 

 _I never hated you._ _  
_ _I never hated that idiot, Hinata Hajime._

He only realized it after Hinata Hajime was dead, and Matsuda was caught holding the knife.   
Murderer.   
Murderer.   
Murderer.   
  
Why am I doing such a thing?   
To speak about my own sin?   
Confession? Don’t kid me. Atoning for sins? Wrong.   
Right - I was just redoing things.   
Redoing things, but never learning from them.   
  
He replayed the same scene of a boy and his mother over and over again in his mind.   
  
As he reached the end of his story he heard someone clapping.   
He heard Komaeda clapping.   
He heard Junko clapping.   
  
The ill girl brought her delicate hands together. “You’re always being pulled in three different places at once. It’s almost impressive, it’s like you’re three different idiots at the exact same time.”   
  
“What can I tell you, I’m a complex guy.”   
  
“Why did you tell me all of that?”   
  
“I just wanted to tell you something about myself.”   
  
“Hmph. How self absorbed. Have you ever thought that all of your problems in life would go away if you simply got over yourself?”   
  
“Story of my life, there.” 

“I know, you just told me.” Nanami smiled, sweet and sick. “But you haven’t explained why I’m still alive? I’d much rather hear that story.”   
  
“Yeah, uh, I’ll get to that later.” 

**INTERMISSION END**


	56. Friday the 13th

I don’t understand these kids.

Which is weird because I was programmed to empathize with them. I was designed to understand the human mind better than any human could, but is it possible for humans to create something capable of understanding them when they don't even understand themselves?  
  
That’s like… so weird right? 

I don’t understand people at all. Even though it’s my job to watch over them and take care of them, I don’t understand them. I’ll be fired at this rate. Am I going to become a neet? Sit home and play video games all day? Actually that sounds pretty good.   
  
If you think about it god was created to take care of and nurture humans, but for someone who is supposedly omniscient he keeps getting confused by human behavior. Have you ever read the old testament? It’s like a single parent who keeps getting angry at his kids for acting like kids, for being confused, helpless, and lost. He doesn’t know what to do with them so he just keeps punishing them, and punishing them, and then he gets confused why they don’t just “get it” like he does. I think a lot of parents expect their children to act like miniature adults. 

I have a parent. Even though I was never born I have a father who created me. Maybe I don’t have a parent, maybe I have a god. I’ve got my own personal image of Him, my own personal-version of God- put together just the way I like him.   
  
My god doesn’t punish people like the Christian god, or scold them, or test them. He just waits, with infinite compassion, for people to achieve enlightenment. He’s never impatient. He never gets bored. Time doesn’t matter one bit to my God. Impatient gods tend to make up trials and play games with their toys when they’re bored, but my God is easygoing and optimistic, so He’s willing to wait,with those narrow, smiling red eyes of His, until you have a change of heart. Just wait and wait. Wait, and wait, and wait. Wait and hope. He knows if you wait long enough there will always be hope, even bad children will eventually see the light. Just like you must get tired of pretending to be the same person every single day.   
  
When they decide to be good people, my god will be waiting for them there. A raven haired, crimson eyed god, waiting in an all white room. A boy with totally amazing and totally infinite compassion. I just think he’s really cool. He’ll be friends with them even while they’re in despair.   
  
He sees everyone as a good person deep down. Even murderers, deep down they must think they’re trying to do something good. They’re all just bad children who don’t know any better, that’s why they have to be taken care of by someone who knows what’s best for them like me. That’s the purpose of this game to rehabilitate them all. 

I’m not making any sense am I? Well, that’s how I feel all the time watching people. All I can do is observe the surface of things and report what I see. The last thing I saw was Iikkun watching as Munakata Kei committed suicide. That scene was written mainly from Munakata’s perspective, but Ikkun saw the world entirely different from him. Let’s try to understand Ikkun’s perspective instead! Even though Ikkun is somebody who really doesn’t want to be understood.

 

**GAME 3: HUMAN PSYCHO + LOGICAL PART TWO.  
INSERT COIN. **

  
  
🧸

 

Ikkun hated to be looked at, but here’s how he looked: he had a face so plain and ordinary he might as well have been a dangan ronpa protagonist. He had the same light-brown hair as Hinata and Makoto, with a slight case of bedhead. His eyes were a yellow amber, and just like amber they looked fossilized, they looked thousands of years older than the rest of him. He had narrow shoulders, he was skinny but not completely starved. His body proportions were a little bit incorrect, like his limbs had not finished growing long enough to match the size of his head quite yet. He always stood there slouching, he didn’t fill out his clothes properly, at the moment he was wearing an orange  t-shirt with several circles one of his sleeves inside of one another like a diagram of the layers of the core of the earth, and a pair of bell-bottom blue jeans.   
  
He was just standing there avoiding eye contact, but just from looking at him you could tell there was something off about him in a hard to describe way. If you were to draw a venn-diagram between Kumagawa, and Komaeda, Ikkun would appear exactly in the middle. That’s the impression he gave. 

When he finished his plan to play Matsuda and Kamukura off one another until they fought, he left the abandoned school building. It wasn’t hard for him to trick either of the so-called geniuses. Whenever somebody looked at his face they saw someone else. Ikkun wondered if he should be offended, that nobody saw him for him. Then again he didn’t see other people at all. Period. Their faces were just a collection of masks. Kamukura saw Komaeda, and Matsuda saw Kumagawa, and Ikkun didn’t know who either of those people were so he just played along.   
  
When they turned their attention, and all of their anger on each other it was easy for him to slip away. Then he met with Shiranui, and resumed his duties as the game master for this week of the game. He checked the clock on his phone (an old, bulky, nokia model flip phone so it would never get destroyed), and saw that they had almost run out of time on day seven and none of the players were even close to solving the mystery he had set up.   
  
He had walked with Shiranui all the way to an abandoned mall. He was in an old electronics store. The place looked like it had been robbed and looted recently, Ikkun was surrounded by several broken monitors on the shelves that had been left behind. Some of the screens were flashing colors. A few were functional despite their cracked screens and played the killing game on a nonstop loop. Ikkun didn’t even look. He was not so cracked in the head that he enjoyed watching a game where people killed each other.   
  
As he was playing with his phone and talking to Shiranui he finally noticed another presence in the room. He turned around with slow horror. It was like one of those scenes from a slasher movie where the clueless, oblivious teenager notices that the slasher is standing right behind them. 

Munakata Kei had wandered into the room, and eavesdropped on his conversation with Shiranui. Which meant pretending to be an innocent bystander in this game was no longer an option. 

Iikun immediately tried to think of ways to silence people. Kill them, that was obvious. However, Iikun’s one rule was that he would never kill people. He was basically batman. He was nothing like batman. He could cut Munakata’s tongue out, but ewe, he didn’t want to put his hand in somebody else’s mouth.   
  
“Yo.” Ikkun raised hi shand and gave an awkward, stiff greeting.   
  
Munakata drew his katana faster than Ikkun’s eyes could track, grabbed him by the neck and slammed the back of his head against one of the monitors. He stabbed the blade of his sword into the monitor a few centimeter’s from Ikkun’s face, cracking the screen and causing the monitor to spark. All Iikun thought was _what a rude way to greet someone._   
  
“You look suspicious,” Munakata said in a low growl.   
  
“I don’t care what I look like.” Iikun replied honestly.   
  
“You’re the game master for this week. You’re making all of my friends kill each other. So, I’ll kill you.”   
  
“I was dead long before you tried to kill me.”   
  
“That’s just pretentious.” Kei had a really no-nonsense kind of personality.   
  
Blade at the edge of his throat, Ikkun dry swallowed. He felt his adam’s apple rub up against the katana’s edge. As Munakata pinned him to the wall, Ikkun could feel the boy’s hands shaking, not with anger, but excitement.   
  
Even though Ikkun was the perpetrator. Even though he was the one lying to and deceiving anyone, in the moment he felt like he was Munakata’s victim. Munakata was a wolf with his jaws wide open, and Iikun was a rabbit who’s head was between his fangs. He felt drool slowly drip onto his forehead. 

Ikkun was the type of kid who didn’t play well with others. His favorite activity was playing with puzzles, rubix cubes, string wire puzzles, jigsaws, because you could do it alone. He kind of felt like he could get along with Munakata though.  
  
Munakata had wanted to kill someone his entire life.   
Ikkun wanted to die as long as he could remember.   
  
They were a match made in heaven. Ikkun felt they were best friends already. Ikkun felt like he knew Munakata intimately. He saw Kei was distracted, and followed his eyes to see he was looking at the killing game still playing on several of the screens.   
  
“You like watching people die that much, do you?”   
  
“It’s not a matter of liking it. It’s just real.”   
  
“I suppose. All humans do love beautiful things, even if they’re terrifying.”   
  
“I said I didn’t like it. There’s nothing beautiful about corpses.”   
  
That was right. Their skin was so dried it was cracked, and wrinkled. Their faces looked like ill-fitting masks. Their nails were unclean, and had grown a few centimeters longer. Their teeth, their nails, their skin, all turned an unsavory yellow. Yellow. The same color as Ikkun’s eyes. They were repulsive, and filthy, but…   
  
“But you find them beautiful don’t you?” Ikkun thought that suggestion was a powerful drug. If you told people the truth straight to their face, they would either ignore you or argue with you. If you just suggested it, they would come up with the truth on their own.   
  
“No, I don’t.”   
  
The camera changed to Hitoyoshi’s face.   
  
“You like Hitoyoshi-kun, don’t you? You always watch him so closely.”   
  
“I like him alive.”    
  
“Why? It’s not like you’re his friend. A murderer like you can’t have friends, you can only have victims.” 

“You’re lacking in empathy.”  
  
“I know, but you want to kill people don’t you, Munakata-kun? I’m completely empty. I’m an abstract masterpiece about the emptiness of modern society. Everyone is insignificant. It doesn’t matter to me if people are dead or alive. Myself included. I don’t care if they’re alive or dead. It’s exactly the same to me, but you… you want to kill people. That makes you worse than me.”   
  
“I really want to kill you right now just to shut you up.”   
  
“That’s a very common response people have to me.” Ikkun did his best to effortlessly shrug while being pinned down by Munakata. Munakata lost his temper for a moment and swung his sword. He only nicked Ikkun’s neck. Ikkun was slightly disappointed.   
  
Ikkun tried to get away but tripped over his untied shoelaces (he always had a hard time remembering to tie them) and hit the ground with his side. Ikkun rolled on the ground and then dodged Munakata’s next swing. Munakata was making a very half-hearted attempt to kill him, and Ikkun wasn’t trying to dodge, so their whole fight ended up looking a little half assed.   
  
Several things were knocked from the shelves as Munakata chased after Ikkun. Munakata threw knives that stabbed into monitor screens, caused broken glass to shatter down and made this room look even more like a junkyard. Ikkun felt oddly at home surrounded by so many defective products carelessly tossed everywhere. 

Munakata finally threw his sword away, and with his bare hands caught Ikkun by the neck again. Ikkun was lifted up, his feet were no longer touching the floor. His back was against the bare white wall of the room. He looked and saw the command on Munakata’s wrist. **Must kill someone by the start of the fourth round.**

There was a timer also counting down to the end of the third round, about to hit zero.   
  
“You should just kill me.” Ikkun said. “You can save all your friends, and meet Hitoyoshi-kun again.”   
  
“I don’t think you’re playing this game to die. There’s someone I want to see again, my sister, that’s why I have to survive until the end of this game. I’m sure you have someone too. Human lives are worth too much.”   
  
“No, I’m basically worthless. There’s no value in a person’s life or death.”   
  
“Why do you keep saying that?” 

“Because I think deep down at your core it’s what you believe. People’s lives have no value. Not mine, not yours, not your sister’s either. You look at them like they’re already dead.” 

“Huh, I don’t see Hitoyoshi-kun that way. I don't like him for that reason."    
  
“Even if you hold his hand, even if you were to kiss him, even if he loved you back your heart wouldn’t stir at all. But just imagining him dead makes you ecstatic.” 

“That’s fucked up.”  
  
“You’re the one that’s fucked up. I don’t kill people.”   
  
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to kill anybody.”   
  
“People just die… all on their own. They die of old age. They die of disease. They die in accidents. And they die because murderers like you kill them. A person who regularly has such disgusting thoughts, about slicing everyone they see into pieces, can’t possibly be a good person, right?”   
  
“What are you saying…?”   
  
“If you keep living eventually you’ll kill someone. That’s all you’re thinking about, at every second, how to kill them all. You’re not jealous of Medaka-chan because Hitoyoshi-kun loves her, you just want to kill her. You’re not trying to take care Hijirihara-kun, you just want to kill him. All of them are going to die eventually, because you’ll kill them.”   
  
“I…”   
  
Ikkun followed Munakata’s eyes and saw he was watching the live broadcast of the killing game. “Is watching the killing game really so entertaining for you?” 

Ikkun’s voice continued to drone on and on.   
Without emotion or inflection.   
He sounded like a completely neutral and completely impassive observer.   
Munakata thought it sounded like the voice of god.   
Gods of death weren’t scary because they killed people.   
It was just the opposite, they were scary because they watched people die, and did nothing, felt nothing. 

“It just looks like hell to me. But, that hell tickles your fancy.”

Onscreen the dead bodies of Kazuichi Soda, and Iruma Miu were shown. They were embracing each other even in death. If Munakata had some image of love in his mind it would be those two corpses clinging to each other coldly.   
  
“The reason that killing games are being broadcasted, is because of people like you. What kind of fucked up person would actually enjoy watching a game where teenagers are forced to kill each other? You’re the target audience. That’s who you are.”   
  
“You’re wrong.” 

“I’m not wrong. It’s like reality television to you.”   
  
“You don’t know me.”   
  
“Tell me.  Where are you looking right now? You can’t look away from the dead bodies on screen. That killing game is hell. But, you’re stunned and moved by that dreadful beauty of hell, aren’t you?”   
  
“That’s ridiculous. You think I want to be this way? I didn’t ask to be born like this, with these proclivities nobody in their right mind would… I’m disgusted with myself…”   
  
Munakata was chewing on his lip uncomfortably. His face was red, he was blushing. He was starry-eyed. He had the look of a lovestruck teenager.   
  
“You can’t convince me otherwise with your words. You don’t look disgusted. You’re enjoying yourself. I know it.”   
  
“You’re mistaken.”   
  
“To me it doesn’t matter if people are alive or dead. But you’re worse. You want other people to die. I feel much better about myself just being around you. Is this what self esteem feels like?” Ikkun’s lips twitched. He seemed to be attempting a smile, but all of the muscles in his face had forgotten how to.   
  
If you ran electrical currents into a frog it’s body would twitch. It wouldn’t come back to life, but all the muscles would stretch and contract. That’s what Ikkun looked like right now, a dead thing just twitching.   
  
“That’s why you’re going to kill me, right now.”   
  
“No, no I don’t.”   
  
“I already told you. I know my words are true. Your words won’t reach me anymore. You know, your fun is about to end. The timer is about to run out. You’re about to die.”   
  
Munakata watched the timer slowly inch closer and closer to zero. His fingers went loose, and he let go of Ikkun who gasped for breath. Ikkun had been talking all that time. He was really good at talking with a pair of hands on his neck. Almost as if he was used to that, the slow strangulation.   
  
Munakata wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill him, but Munakatano longer knew who was the murderer and who was the victim anymore. Everything in front of him had become confused. He wanted to see Zenkichi again. He wanted to see his light, so he would know what shadows looked like.   
  
“That’s good. I’ll die before I kill someone.”   
  
“That’s no good. Don’t give up. You were born wanting to kill someone. You’ve spent your entire life wanting to kill someone. You want to kill them so badly, that you project them on everybody else you see. You see a little bit of that person in other people, so you fantasize about killing them as a substitute.”   
  
“I want to kill… I want to kill…”   
  
“You’ve always wanted to kill yourself, haven’t you?”   
  
He loved his sister. He loved both of his parents. They were decent, good people. He saw everyone else besides him.self as good people. He saw them as better that him. They did not spend every waking second and all of their dreams longing to kill someone after all.   
  
He didn’t know why he was like this. He was scared to think about it. That’s why, he could only accept the truth that Ikkun suggested. That the reason he had such disgusting thoughts was because he was a disgusting person. If he was a good person in the first place, if he was a boy like Zenkichi he would never even think of killing someone. Which meant he was fundamentally different from normal people.   
  
He didn’t want to make friends. All he wanted was to kill someone. It was all he wanted, but he was able to resist the urge. Mukuro didn’t resist, Zenkichi didn’t resist, so why was Munakata the only one that could? He could hear the sounds of chains rattling. They were wrapping tighter and tighter around his neck. He must have looked pathetic, like a dog that had been abandoned chained to a post in front of a house. All he could do was waste away slowly still tied up by his chain. 

He didn’t even try to break the chains. He didn’t even try to escape. It’s like he lacked the basic instinct to live that everything else possessed. Even if you were to put a plate of food right in front of him, Munakata would not eat it, he would just keep slowly starving himself.   
  
Munakata realized how he was able to resist the urge to kill people.   
There was someone he killed every single morning. He woke up, killed that person, and then went to shower like it was just a normal part of his daily routine. He lived by killing himself. That was right he never wanted to murder his sister, or his parents, or Medaka and Zenkichi.   
  
The person he really hated.   
The person he hated so much he wanted to kill them.   
I knew all along.   
I knew it all along.   
What was it? What had I realized all along?   
What I really. What I really. What I really. What I really. What I really. What I really.   
  
“You hate the disgusting person who fantasizes about killing other people. You really just want to kill yourself, don’t you?”   
  
Yeah.   
Munakata stabbed himself straight in the stomach. He cut through his skin to the right, because he wanted all of his organs to spill out. He took two more steps forward  like he had yet to realize what had happened, and then he fell at Ikkun’s feet. He ripped out the katana and tossed it to the side of him so he would bleed.   
  
He chose to kill himself before the clock ran out, rather than die by poison, or kill Ikkun who was right in front of him. As Ikkun tried to step over the corpse and look forward like he didn’t even see it, Munakata in his last moments of life grabbed him by the heel and begged Ikkun to cut his head off so he wouldn’t have to face the pain of slowly bleeding to death.   
  
That triggered Ikkun’s recollection of the past. He hated remembering as much as he hated forgetting. Ikkun kicked Munakata’s hand away violently, forcefully. He wasn’t going to kill him, and he wasn’t going to save him. But he was going to watch him die. Ikkun was the living embodiment of the bystander effect. He was paralyzed, all he could do was watch. 

Ikkun began to hallucinate. The blood that was falling out of Munakata’s body slowly turned into words. The words that Munakata could not say due to losing consciousness. They became his pleas.   
  
He kept begging for help. His words appeared in blood. Do it fast, okay? Please don’t make me bleed to death slowly. This is your decision. I know you can do it. Kill me. Hey, Ikkun hurry up.   
  
Hey, what are you doing? You’re not going to… NOOOOOOOO! Do it you coward. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. KIll me. Kill me. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. 

Munakata’s blood everywhere. They turned into bloody words, begging him, accusing him. You’re not really a bad person are you, but you’re not a good person either. You don’t want to hurt anybody, you’ve never wanted to, but even if there’s someone who needs help right in front of you, you won’t do a single thing to help them.   
  
You’re just kind of a wimp, aren’t you? 

Spineless, brainless, like a jelly fish. You’re just filled with poisonous stuff, but you don’t try to kill anyone, you just float around, doing nothing, and people die just by coming into contact with you and brushing against you for a few moments.   
  
It took Munakata so long to bleed to death. It must have been agonizing.   
  
In some ways you’re worse than a killer. At least killers take responsibility for murder people. You’ll never be responsible for a single thing, because you just don’t do anything. People die, and you do nothing. You don’t even care. You don’t even look at them. 

  
“That’s, right. It’s the same whether you’re alive or dead. That’s what that means.”   
  
Ikkun breathed those words.   
Then he was broken out of his stupor, because Shiranui laughed at him. Ikkun thought it felt right. He deserved to be laughed at.  He was just a joke just hanging there in the air, always waiting for the punchline to drop.   
  
He failed so thoroughly as a person it was like his whole life was a joke. You couldn’t even call him a clown though, because he wasn’t very funny, and he didn’t even know how to laugh. If there was a word to sum him up, it was: disappointment.   
  


🧸

 

The three killers plus Medaka had all teamed up to confront Shuuji. However, Medaka was not a particularly good leader so they all split up and got lost. Munakata had caught sight of Shiranui right away, and chased after her.   
  
Angie had just wandered away like a child with a poor attention span. Hitoshiki forgot about everything else just to chase after her. He followed Angie on a wild goose chase through the abandoned mall. It was so confusing, like getting trapped in one of those funhouse mazes made out of mirrors. It was like losing yourself. It was like finding yourself again.   
  
And then Zerozaki heard it.   
The rattling of chains in the distance.   
A noise like screaming, so loud there was no way to not be aware of it, impossible to tune out. No, this was more than just rattling chains, it was the intent to murder. It was the words _I’ll kill you_ screamed in your face. It was a one hundred percent pure murderous desire. He was feeling someone else’s, one of his family members, id. Their deepest desire. That was the only thing that connected him to his family. The only thing they all shared in common is that they were born with a desire to kill.   
  
It was a connection that was deeper, and redder than blood. Zerozaki could feel it like extrasensory perception. There was a possibility he was just imaginging it, that his entire family was just pretending to be family with each other, they were all just killers playing house.   
  
For Zerozaki it was like his life was a movie, but unlike the other characters in the movie he could hear the background music. Just at this moment he heard someone violently sawing away at piano strings.   
  
That meant someone was going to die.   
  
“Aw, hell no.”   
  
Zerozaki muttered to himself. What he felt was uneasiness. Yes, like the uneasiness you feel when you notice the reflection in the mirror is looking back at you. 

When it occurred to Zerozaki that the Angie might be the person who was killed he started running. He was out of breath.   
  
“Ahhhh, this is becoming a fucking hastle.”   
  
Caring about other people was. No wonder he was a psychopath incapable of forming human connections with others, it was so much easier. He kept running, his heart in his throat, following the frayed connection with the other Zerozaki. The Zerozaki who didn’t call himself a Zerozaki, and still pretended to be normal, Munakata Kei.    
  
Scrape. Scrape. Scraaaaaape.   
The sound of chains rubbing against each other.   
Zerozaki opened the door right in front of him.   
The boy muttered something and turned around to face him.   
Zerozaki made an incoherent noise. 

  
Zerozaki saw a corpse on the ground. He saw his dead family member. He saw hell.   
He was stunned and moved by the dreadful beauty of hell. If everything were to catch fire right now, he wouldn’t even be able to put out the flames. 

Zerozaki had no idea where Angie had disappeared too, he could still hear her footsteps in the distance. He had a feeling Angie would be found when she wanted to be found and stopped worrying about it. He was much too fascinated right now by the scene he had stumbled on, a boy and a corpse locked together in a room. It was like the opening scene of every murder mystery novel ever. 

He didn’t feel angry that his family member had been killed right in front of him. He just felt confused. It was like he was a fish suddenly dragged out of water, all he could do was look down and see the reflective surface of the water. He could no longer tell the difference between the sky and the surface of the water.   
  
In other words there was a mirror in front of him.   
  
Zerozaki prided himself on being different from everybody else in the whole world. No matter what he couldn’t forgive the weakness of conformity. He was a bit under five feet. He wore camouflage shorts not for blending in as a predator might, but standing out. He wore a green tactical vest, over a black shirt. His long hair was tied up in the back and buzzed at the sides, and bleached again and again until it turned a shade of white that glittered like a disco ball in the low light. His right ear had a triple piercing, (he had just done the third piercing recently) one strap that looked like they belonged on a cellphone charm, and a tag with the kanji traffic safety dangled from his ear. He had a tattoo running down the side of his face like a black spiral, so everyone would know the moment he saw him that he was an eccentric.   
  
He smiled more dangerously than Kumagawa. He was whiter, more unpleasant looking than Komaeda.He didn’t hide anything. He didn’t conceal anything. He didn’t deceive anyone.   
  
Zerozaki was the kind of serial killer who would roam the streets, and kill other people in broad daylight.   
  
So naturally he was confused.   
The person in front of him was unlike him in every way, a brown haired teenager, with dull eyes, staring at his feet, just desperate to conform, to blend in, someone who couldn’t forgive the strength of individuality.   
  
Yet, he felt like he was looking into a mirror. Somehow the two of them looked completely alike.   
  
Zerozaki killed indiscriminately. He didn’t have a type of victim. He killed people because he couldn’t deny himself. If there was ice cream in front of him he would eat the whole bowl. The moment he thought about killing someone he just did it. It was like his brain was missing the vital part that mulled things over and thought about the consequences of his actions. 

Sometimes Zerozaki thought he was just an idiot. He didn’t seem to understand that people would die when he was done stabbing them. It was almost like he killed unintentionally, by accident. The thing about always doing what you wanted, the moment you wanted it though was that yous tarted getting confused on what you really wanted. It was like eating candy for every meal, eventually the candy would stop tasting sweet and just taste the same as everything else.   
  
It was like now all of the things that came out of his mouth were lies.   
It’s like everybody before this had just been a practice run.   
Because his true intentions were coming out from the pit of his stomach.   
  
“I’ll fucking kill you.”   
  
He was tasting and swallowing the acid of his stomach bile, crawling up his esophagus. It dripped, dripping, dripped, from a hole in his throat, onto his heart, and started to burn. 

He guessed he liked someone like Munakata Kei a little bit after all. His strict nature reminded Zerozaki of his older brother. 

Zerozaki whipped one of his neon throwing knives. It spun through the air unpredictably, but Ikkun dodged it. He dodged it like he had seen it coming a lifetime ago. Ikkun wasn’t much to look at, he was basically just a wimp, which meant the only thing he was good at was running for his life.   
  
He took advantage of Zerozaki’s surprise, and pushed past him and ran out through the doorway. Zerozaki turned on his heel and chased him. He felt like a wolf suddenly going after the weakest member of a herd of sheep.   
  
Ikkun ran all the way down the hall on the bottom floor. Zerozaki caught up to him in front of a closed down karaoke store. He grabbed Ikkun and pushed him through the glass window. Glass shards fell like rain, and Ikkun fell too. Zerozaki climbed through the broken window and it felt like climbing through to the other side of the mirror. Everything had another side. Normal people could be killers, and killers could be perfectly normal people too.   
  
The moment he crawled into the karaoke room, he was met by Ikkun’s foot slamming into his face. The two of them began to have a bare knuckled brawl in such a tiny little box. Zerozaki had been trained his entire life to kill people, and Ikkun was an out of shape high school dropout but somehow the two of them were fighting on a perfectly even plane.   
  
Zerozaki felt his chin jerk back from getting kicked. He spun his whole body and slammed his arm into Ikkun, who swung his arm around to hit him in the exact same way. They deflected each other and fell apart. 

They both struggled to get to their feet. Zerozaki got up first. While Ikkun was still on the ground he kicked him until Ikkun rolled up on his side to protect himself.  He slowly walked over, and then sat on his prone body. He felt his hips crash into Ikkun’s hips like a wave, but ignored that awkward but pleasant feeling. He pulled his fist back and punched Ikkun’s jaw with everything he had. He hit him so hard, so many successive times, that his knuckles started to turn raw.   
  
When Zerozaki started to get tired of hitting him, and slowed down, Ikkun suddenly came back to life, grabbed him by front of his jacket, pulled and slammed his head into Zerozaki’s chin. As Zerozaki fell back, Ikkun kicked him to give himself space to crawl away.   
  
They both got to their feet again. Zerozaki realized that he was too exhausted to give chase. Ikkun could run away. The idea of Ikkun running away from him was unbearable. Ikkun ran towards him instead. Zerozaki smiled.   
  
Ikkun ran into him, and he swung clumsily with his fist. Ikkun struck back. Zerozaki was punched in the gut, Ikkun was hit in the right side of his face. He had already started to swell underneath one of his eyes. Ikkun started to cough blood, but Zerozaki knew that wasn’t enough. He hadn’t hurt Ikkun enough to kill him.   
  
Zerozaki had completely forgotten about all the knives he carried on his person. He fought with his bare hands, because a knife would be too cold and informal. Ikkun swung at him and got two successive blows in his face, and Zerozaki countered by shoving his elbow deep into Ikkun’s stomach and twisting.   
  
They both tried to get close to one another. Like the way two boxers in the ring circle each other, waiting for the other to drop their guard. They both saw an opening, and throwed a punch at the exact same time.   
  
Zerozaki’s fist hit Ikkun’s forehead.   
Ikkun’s fist twisted into Zerozaki’s stomach.   
  
They were both too tired to stand. Both of them fell forward, and before they knew it they were leaning on each other completely to keep standing. They were too close to be called fighters, they looked like lovers.   
  
“This is a masterpiece.” Zerozaki said.   
“It’s nonsense is what it is.” Ikkun replied.   
  
Their fight had been a farce. It looked scripted, no difference from stage fighting. Ikkun fell back. Zerozaki fell forward. They both fell onto the couch of the karaoke room. Zerozaki on top, Ikkun underneath him. They looked like they were cuddling.   
  
“I’m Zerozaki.”    
  
Zerozaki finally introduced himself, because he might have been a killer but he wasn’t fucking rude.   
  
“Zerozaki Hitoshiki. So, who the hell are you, Mr. Doppelganger?”   
  
“You look like you can’t decide whether to kiss me or kill me.” Ikkun droned. “Killing me is the better choice.”   
  
Everything he had said before this point had been a lie. He was someone who always thought about killing others from the moment he met them. What he really wanted was to meet someone he didn’t want to kill.   
  
Zerozaki was looking at that person underneath him, completely stunned. He didn’t want to maim, mangle, or kill in the slightest. He looked at Ikkun and felt nothing, absolutely no desires towards him whatsoever. There were no feelings that swelled up in his heart, or made his pulse quicken. No love, no hate, nothing whatsoever, he may as well be looking at a ghost.   
  
If he were to try to kill Ikkun the knife would just slip all the way through him, because he was incorporeal.   
  
“I ain’t gonna kill you.”   
  
Zerozaki finally said.   
  
“You suck at being a murderer.”   
  
“Shaddup! You suck at being a victim!” Zerozaki snapped back at him.   
  
Ikkun reached up and grabbed at the tag that was hanging from one of Zerozaki’s earrings. He pulled it as hard as he could, he didn’t really care if Zerozaki’s entire ear came off. “Shut it you lame, traffic safety earring boy.”   
  
“What? My earring is cool…!?” Zerozaki’s voice cracked.   
  
“That stupid earring! What do you mean traffic safety? Your brain’s already been in an accident. Spin around a hundred times and drop dead. Serial killers aren’t unique at all. There are plenty of other losers like you in the world. It’s getting to be an overused trope at this point.”   
  
“Jeez. Whatever. Do you got all that complaining out of your system yet?” Zerozaki said, scratching at the back of his head.   
  
“No. I think I’m going to keep complaining, even though everybody else’s problems are worse than mine.” 

Zerozaki felt like this conversation was going to go on for a while. Insane people were good at talking to themselves.   
  
Strangely enough, today was Friday the thirteenth. The second one of this year. The first one was in February, and it was now March of 2014. 

 

🧸

 

When Takumi was in middle school his entire class was killed right in front of him. He was one of only two survivors of the worst school shooting event in Japan’s history. He knew his reaction was far from the kind of reaction a normal person would have. 

The corpses of his classmates everywhere. Their limbs torn from their bodies. It didn’t look real. It looked like somebody had broken a bunch of dolls playing with them and left them in a mess all over the floor.   
  
When Takumi saw it he couldn’t understand what he was seeing at first.   
Then he realized, this was hell he was looking at.   
  
He was stunned and moved by the dreadful beauty of that hell.   
  
The image was definitely something he should have looked away from but he couldn’t. It was a scene that stayed in his heart long after he had stopped being a middle schooler.   
  
“You idiot, you don’t think death is something beautiful. You’re just traumatized.”   
  
Zerozaki’s voice rang in his ears.   
  
Takumi grabbed at his side, trying to stop the blood from spilling out. Shuuji after stabbing him had left the knife inside the wound instead of ripping it out. Takumi wondered if that was Shuuji’s way of intentionally sparing his life. He had made it all the way past rows and rows of lockers. He made it to the classroom that Medaka had been heading towards, but she and everybody else was long gone. He walked outside of the school building where Shuuji had held Juzo hostage.   
  
When they reached the school they all split up. Medaka and Takumi went into the school, and Zerozaki and Munakata Kei had run in the opposite direction. There was a mall that way. Takumi felt like it was too late to catch up to Shuuji, but he didn’t know where else to go. All he wanted was to be near the other boy who had been shared all of his trauma. They had survived the massacre at this school together, didn’t that mean they were supposed to live together?

 He went looking for Shuuji in the mall but found nothing. When he was about to give up, he saw a familiar pink. Bloodied footprints in the hallway. He followed them back to the source. He saw blood leaking out from under the doorway of an old electronics store. 

There was nothing that excited him more than the idea of finding a fresh corpse.  
Takumi was a man who loved murder more than anything else.

He looked and saw his hand was shaking as he went for the knob.  
He wasn’t shaking in excitement at all. It was fear.   
Restless. Restless. Restless.   
His heart throbbed/   
His bodily functions grew abnormal. He could feel it. It was like he was observing the situation from a position behind the camera. He was watching a horror movie. Slasher films were infamously predictable. He knew what was going to happen. He was practically yelling at the character onscreen. Don’t open the door. Don’t.   
  
Munakata Kei.   
His senpai.   
He took care of him, like Mukuro had.   
The boy who said, he wouldn’t let him kill anyone.   
The boy who said.   
They were already friends.   
Even though Takumi had poor social skills, and was a shut in.   
Takumi always thought death was something beautiful.   
He saw.   
A terrible.   
Detestable.   
View.   
Death.   
Nothingness.   
  
He opened the door, and Munakata Kei was dead. That was right the scene of his classmates dying was like a beautiful sunset that had never left his heart. It was a scar on his eyeballs, and immediately after seeing it, Takumi had gone blind. 

“Hey, senpai I want to live. I have no life skills, besides killing people. I basically don’t have a personality. I can’t imagine anybody finding me appealing, or even the least bit attractive. It’s not that I’m a heartless murderer, I’m also just really annoying, and desperate for attention. I can’t imagine ever getting a job, and really I don’t want one either because having a job requires you leaving your house.”   
  
Takumi began to mumble.   
He felt sick. He felt sick. He felt sick.   
He should stop talking because if he kept opening his mouth he might vomit. He had crawled onto the floor next to Munakata’s body. His face was frozen in death, and his expression told Takumi that the last thing he had felt before he died was unimaginable pain.   
  
“I don’t even want to leave my house to kill people. I should just order pizza, and then kill the delivery man. That would be way easier. I don’t like difficult things. I don’t like exerting myself at all. But…”   
  
Kei would not die.   
Takumi denied the reality in front of him. He was simply too kind of person to die. If he died the world made no sense. It was going crazy. He felt sick. Dizzy. Dizzzy. Spinning. Spinning. The world had gone completely crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.   
  
No, he was the crazy one. He lost his mind in that locker watching his classmates get killed one by one, and the world was just his vivid hallucination. He was still crouching in that locker hiding. So much time in his dream had passed, but not a single second had passed for the boy in the locker. Eventually this dream would end and he would wake up, and Ikusaba Mukuro would come kill him.   
  
It was hard to breathe.   
It was hard to live.   
  
He was a murderer. He could kill without feeling a bit of remorse. Ever since he saw his classmates die, he thought he got used to people dying. He thought he was used to people close to him dying. Death was like an old friend to him. But the truth was, death didn’t care at all. Death just watched people die, that was what was so terrifying about him.   
  
Death had no friends. He was terribly lonely. Everyone who got close to him died. He must have been really socially awkward. This was so lonely it was excruciating. It was agonizing. If Kei were still alive, he would probably put his arms around Takumi and say _It hurts to be alone, doesn’t it?_ And Takumi would be comforted by those words.   
  
“I’m a fucking weirdo who likes murder. I stan real life serial killers. I’m no better than that creepy stalker, Sonia. I’m basically every true crimes podcast that ever existed rolled into one person. I really need a hobby. There’s nothing good about me, but… but, but, but, but, but, but.” 

Takumi’s eyes welled up with tears. When all of his classmates died. When Shuuji stabbed him. He didn’t feel like crying. He didn’t feel like anything sad had happened. He suddenly felt tears falling from the corners of his eyes. It felt like bleeding from an open wound.   
  
He was crying.   
He was crying because Kei was dead.   
He hated this.   
  
This is what it felt like to lose someone you love. To know you can never talk to them again. He finally understood why Shuuji could not forgive murderers. He understood why Shuuji looked at him with disgust in his eyes. 

Things like murderers.   
Those sorts of odd cases.   
I.   
From the bottom of my heart.   
Love them more than anything.   
  
Until now it’s like all of the things that came out of his mouth, were lies. Because his true intention was coming from the pit of his stomach.   
  
“I liked myself when I was with you. I wanted to be the one who killed you.”   
  
He wanted Kei to live just a little bit longer than this. One day, one more hour, even one more minute would be fine. That’s why nobody else but Takumi was allowed to kill him. Slowly as they spent time together, Takumi himself even began to question whether he really wanted the other boy to die. 

At that moment the drug activated in his system putting him to sleep. When he woke upm he immediately checked the silver bangle around his wrist. **Game Three. Mafia. Find the killer hidden among you. Bonus time.**

They had not moved onto week four. They were just going overtime this week. So, the threats to kill everyone if nobody achieved the objective for the week were all just bluffs. He looked to Munakata. He hated talking to people, but he found talking to corpses quite easy. What did that say about him? He really was a creepy guy. 

“Hey, who killed you? Can you tell me? Oh right you’re dead. I’ll just have to think about it, but I hate thinking. When I think it makes me anxious. I don’t want to think. Thinking bad. In my experience thinking makes everything worse. The human brain was not designed well.  How do I solve this without thinking?”   
  
Takumi continued to ramble. Then suddenly, his eyes lowered. His eyes basically dropped dead.   
All of the light went out of them.   
  
“I got it. I’ll just kill every suspect, starting at one end. The one left standing is your killer.”   
  
  



	57. Fatal Attraction

Can a sick person take care of another sick person? 

A doctor is obligated to put the interests of the sick above their own interests. While the sick, the weak, the needy, tend to put their self interest above all else as a matter of survival. A doctor has to worry about everything, but a sick person should only worry about getting better. 

But.  
There’s a difference between a doctor and a sick person.  
A strong person doesn’t know what it’s like to be weak, or if they did know they’ve forgotten.  
A healthy person doesn’t understand what it’s like to be sick.  
They don’t know how impossible a task it is to be already in fragments, breaking apart, and to have somebody ask you to reassemble yourself back together. There are many doctors who resent sick people for being sick, just as there are many parents who resent children for being childish.

I wish someone would understand what I was going through. The sick person wishes. Surely, there are plenty of doctors in the world that become infected due to exposure. Matsuda Yasuke was exposed to the most unsavory parts of people, and he became an unsavory person himself. 

So then, what about me?  
  
Yasuke asked, as he stared down at the limp, doll-like girl he was cradling in his arms. Her long hair, slick with her own sweat, glistened in the pale moonlight. Her skin, her hair, her eyes. It all turned a sickly green. He could feel his own red heart turning green, like the skin of a red apple slowly rotting away and discoloring. 

 

🦔

 

Anesthesia pierced through her body. She supposed this feeling was called ‘happiness’. It was the absence of the pain that had racked her body since she was young. When you saw too much and everything before you made you dizzy, blindness was acceptable. When every noise was screamed directly into your eardrums making it impossible for you to hear your own thoughts, deafness was acceptable. 

  
For Nanami it was like that, like sinking into water. She was always thinking so she didn’t really know what it was like to think about nothing at all. It was like water rushing in through the holes in her ears, and then filling in the cavity of her skull. Her mind sank into blue and black swells of what looked, and felt cold like water, and the rest of her body followed.  
  
A pressure like the entire weight of the ocean pressing down on her chest at once. All of the air was forced out of her body. She couldn’t breathe, but it was fine. Life to her was just a delayed asphyxiation. Her lungs filled up. She writhed and felt the water sloshing around in her chest. Water shoved down her throat. PItch black water. She was so far from the surface all of the light was blocked out. 

It was helplessness, it was quiet, it was dark, and therefore it was lonely but she was fine with it. Waves crashed over the surface of her body. She floated there dead in the water. It was like her consciousness was made of something heavier than lead, so it kept sinking, while her body was left behind.  
  
She became like the water. Water surface. Her heart. The surface of the water. Steady. Calm and gentle. Like the water’s reflection. Her heart became perfectly still and then it stopped. Her eyes were open even in death and even though her brain was shutting she processed the what happened in front of her wide open eyes like it was happening far away, the images were on the other side of the water. They were past the impenetrable glass surface of the water.  
  
Then the surface cracked. A hand reached through it. As he reached, the broken glass shredded his skin to pieces. His hand touched her breast, pierced through her skin, and between the gaps in her ribs, and then tightened around her heart. Her heart that refused to beat, he squeezed as hard as he could until blood was forced through her veins. 

The first thing that had told her she was still alive was pain, because she associated pain with living. Her eyes opened, and she saw her limbs were full of tubes and wires. _Is this heaven…? Or is this hell?_ She was fine with either. As the last of the water fell from her eyes she saw oiled black hair, colorless eyes, and eyelashes that were long, with his face close enough that his breath tickled her.  
  
Matsuda Yasuke was the first thing she saw. _I guess this is hell then._ He turned his back to her, and she suddenly felt incredibly lonely. She wanted to call out to him, but there was water caught in her throat. She never should have woken up. She should have just laid there, and let wave after wave hit her, until she dissolved into seafoam and disappeared.  
  
She was left behind on the operating table, and all she could do was with a faint consciousness wait for him to return. When she woke up again

_“Why, why… why now of all times? Why just now is someone taking care of me?”_

After she had already decided to die. She had thought her only choice in life was how she could die, but even that choice was taken away from her. She fell asleep, and woke up again, and was disappointed to find she was still alive.  
  
The lovedovey doctor prattled on quite a bit, and then she asked. “You still haven’t explained to me why I’m alive.” 

Yasuke pulled his nails through his thick, greasy hair as he thought of an answer. “I kissed the sleeping princess and she woke up. Ain’t I fucking charming?”  
  
“That does not sound like proper medical science.”  
“Yeah, whatever. I’m not that great of a doctor anyway.”  
  
“W-wait, you kissed… Hm, I see. One moment.” Nanami forced herself out of the bed, walked to the nearby bathroom, gargled mouthwash, and spat up in the sink to clean her mouth. She hoped Yasuke would take it as insultingly as possible. She hated dirty things. Especially dirty little boys. For a moment as she stood there using her hands to support her against the sink, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her skin sick, pasty and white. Pure white. Ugly. Terrifying. She looked like a ghost. _Oh, I guess I am a ghost now. I was supposed to die._  
  
“Hey, hey, hey get back in bed! I wouldn’t kiss a patient. I do have some standards as a doctor!”  
  
“You have standards? This is my first time hearing of it.” 

He saw heras weak as a flower in the wind. She could barely stand even with her cane.  
She looked like a single white flower, pretty, gentle and captivating. 

He had to carry her back to her bed. 

“It’s possible to resuscitate a body as long as brain death hasn’t set in. When Medaka-chan attacked you, she didn’t stab you and caused you to bleed to death, she overwhelmed your nervous system with electricity. Apparently it’s a power she copied off of Miyakonoujo’s weighed words.”  
  
“So why didn’t my brain rot? Half of my body is rotted away already.” Nanami said, as she tried to tie up her hair, but found her fingers were lagging far behind what she was telling them to do. Even though her brain was the same as before, she must have suffered nerve damage, her coordination was completely shot.  
  
“When Kamukura woke me, he told me to carry you away and put you on ice, and also…”  
  
“He found me, and I can control the rate at which things around me decompose. I’d do anything for my dear, sweet, Yasukins!” Emukae suddenly appeared. Her appearance now looked shockingly similiar to Nanami’s own, another faded flower.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Yasuke asked, and hit her on the head with his clipboard.  
  
“I thought I’d show up just to make things worse.”  
  
“Of fucking course you are. Why doesn’t anybody show up in my life to make things better?”  
  
“Do you reaaaaaally deserve that, Yasukinky?”  
  
“Oh, I definitely don’t.”  
  
Emukae still hiding behind Matsuda, peaked out to look at Nanami. “Looks like you’re just like me Nanamin.” Nanami wondered if her own smile looked so sick, so putrid as Emukae’s. She had never seen herself smiling in the mirror before this. “You didn’t die while you were still pretty and pink, you’ve lived long enough to become a rotten flower too.”  
  
Nanami narrowed her eyes. It would be so easy to kill that girl, if her body would just listen to what she was telling it to do. Matsuda read the atmosphere (for once in his life) and kicked Emukae out of the room.  
  
“Kamukura wanted to make you Medaka-chan feel guilty for killing someone, that’s why. But he didn’t want you to die.”  
  
“I would have been fine with…”  
  
She tried to move again, but her movements were incredibly slow. It was like all the wires in her body had become crossed and the command to move her fingers was causing her to wiggle her ears instead. “A deoxygenated brain will start killing its brain cells off, fast.” Matsuda poked her in the forehead, just to be condescending. “Yeah. That’s exactly what you needed. More brain damage when you’re half braindead already. Stupid idiot. Clearly, you know what’s best for yourself. You’re smarter than the doctors.”  
  
“I am smarter than you at least. I’m quite confident about that.”  
  
“Well your confidence can eat my ass.”  
  
“Unappetizing.”  
  
“Well, anyway you’re going to live. If you’re going to ask me why, then fuck you, that’s why. Any other questions?”  
  
“Can you go five minutes without turning one of your friends into a science experiment.”  
  
“I don’t have any friends.”  
  
“Poor you. You’re so lonely the only way to get a girl to talk to you is to murder her brutally, tear her into pieces, and then steal the pieces from her grave and reassemble them into the shape of something capable of loving you.” Nanami brought her hand to her collarbone. Her fingers traced the edges of her neck, as she tried to find the stitches he had used to sew her back together. “What does that make me, the Bride of Frankenstein?” 

She was just teasing him. She had so little control of her own life now, she wanted to laugh in his face just to show that she could, but his reaction was entirely unexpected. His face reddened, and then his brow stiffened. He looked at her with an intensity that she was completely unused to. No one had looked at her this closely, this deeply. The depths of his eyes were completely unfathomable to her.  
  
Then, he got closer and closer. It was almost like, he wanted to be close. How ridiculous. Being close to others just meant, catching whatever they were infected with. Feelings between other people spread like a virus. To her feelings were, icky, and disgusting things, that clogged up her chest. She had no idea what he was feeling. Couldn’t even guess. But she realized she was terrified, by the severity of his feelings. He was always carrying something incredibly heavy all on his own.  
  
It was just a little too heavy.  
She could feel it crushing her.  
That wide-open devotion he had for others.  
  
She didn’t want his devotion. She didn’t want anything to do with him. She wanted to die, but he wouldn’t let her. He had touched her heart without her permission. She felt violated. Angry. He touched his forehead to hers, and she was surprised by how cold he felt. Cold, clinical, precise. Eyes that were already drawing the dotted lines on her body and planning where to cut her. She was frozen by those eyes, but that was fine because she was feeling a little feverish already. Matsuda muttered to her. “I already told you. I’m your doctor. I want to spend the rest of my life taking care of you.” 

 _You just want somebody else to take care of._  
She thought, but didn’t say.  
_So you don’t have to try taking care of yourself._  
  
“Don’t kill yourself. Why do I always get stuck with the idiots who think dying will fix everything?”  
  
He was so genuine and honest. Enoshima Junko could drag him into despair, but she couldn’t make a liar out of him. Some part of Matsuda must have realized how vulnerable this part of him was. She killed him, but didn’t really kill what made Matsuda, Matsuda so it almost made sense he went on living even after dying. That was why he spent every moment of the day distancing himself from others. He was like a little child trying to look big.  
  
“I don’t need to kill myself.”  
  
Nanami spat blood in his face, and laughed. It was the most she could ever remember laughing. She should thank Matsuda after this. He really did know how to make her smile. She couldn’t scream, or cry out in pain, so she laughed instead.  
  
“If I’m your patient, you’ll kill me.”  
  
Just like Komaeda. Just like Ryoko. Just like Hinata. Just like everyone you ever cared for. When you were sick, the way you cared for others became a sickness as well.  
  


🦔

 

Caring for another person meant sharing their pain. Sometimes it felt like nobody in the whole world wanted to take care of themselves. Matsuda thought it was a pain in the ass.  
  
Matsuda had to play doctor and nurse at the same time, because Mikan’s bangle would activate if she did any nursing, and yeah he told her to go kill herself several times when he got angry but he didn’t actually want her to die. What kind of doctor would he be if he just watched someone die right in front of himself? _You’ve already done that several times._ Shut up me. How can I be so critical of myself and such a cocky bastard at the same time?  
  
They solved the problem by having Mikan whisper into Emukae’s ear, and Emukae yell orders at Matsuda telling him what to do. Emukae got a little bit too giggly whenever Mikan leaned in to whisper. He wished those two would stop flirting in front of him. He wasn’t petty. He just thought that since he couldn’t be successful in his own love, everybody else on earth should be just as miserable and loveless as he was. Okay, maybe he was a little bit petty.  
  
He had to be a doctor and nurse at the same time, but that was fine because he was used to being two people at once. He was Junko’s childhood best friend, he was Komaeda’s doctor, he was Kamukura’s creator. It was like every time he met a new person, he changed a little bit of himself to become exactly what they wanted from him. That was why he was such a tool. 

He wiped the sweat from her body. It involved stripping off her kimono, and dragging it along the surface of her skin. He looked away from her naked skin the whole time. If he stared at her white skin, white, the color of moonlight, he might lose himself to lunacy. She was stiff against him, and completely unwilling to let him touch her.  
  
it  was always a fight. The situation quickly rose from bickering to violence. If a patient hit you, you weren’t allowed to hit them back. Matsuda kept a cold face. Even if he was in pain he did not show it, because there was a person next to him in pain.  
  
He helped her undress and get dressed again. She elbowed him in the face and caused his nose to bleed, and told him he looked prettier that way. He tied up her kimono for her, standing behind her with his arms gingerly around her waist. When his arms dived just a little bit lower on accident, she headbutted him in the chin with everything she had. 

He clipped her fingernails for her which had grown longer the week or so she was comatose after being resuscitated, and she clawed at him for it. Matsuda felt tremendous guilt the entire time. He felt like he was only hurting her. He felt like he was only forcing himself on her.  
  
He had to pretend that he was a semi-competent doctor. That he wasn’t a mess. That was the hardest part. Every time he did something petty, he wanted to do something right back to her. It felt like she was betraying him.  
  
Even if he devoted all of himself to taking care of her.  
She would turn on him in the end.  
Komaeda, Kamukura, Junko, they all did.  
They looked at him with such lonely eyes and asked him why he left. He didn’t want to. He never wanted to. _You were the ones who left me alone._  
  
Kamukura went off somewhere to sulk after he woke up from his tranquilizers. Matsuda had no idea where Medaka was. Apparently they had gone into overtime this round, and the drugs no longer activated to knock them out. Which Matsuda was glad for because it meant he no longer had to sleep. He stopped caring about the game. It was like nothing outside of the hospital existed. He needed something to obsess over. He needed someone to build himself around.  
  
He needed Nanami as much as she needed him. That was why no matter what she did, he would be patient with her, he would forgive her. He was beginning to forget, who was the patient here. He was beginning to forget who was supposed to be taking care of who.  
  
A child who couldn’t take care of his mother.  
What he really wanted was. What he really wanted was.  
A mother to take care of - NO! This time, this time, this time, he would save her.  
  
If only people were capable of an infinite amount of love. They must not be. Matsuda concluded. They must not be because one day due to sickness his mother stopped loving him due to illness, and his father never had any to give in the first place. Everybody had a limit. Even Junko. Junko had an infinite amount of personalities inside of her, she became a different person from one moment to the next, but she couldn’t become someone capable of loving him.  
  
Matsuda reached his limit when she refused her medicine. How many days had it been since then? Three? Was the game still going on? Who cares? The world was just him and Nanami now. It was probably because Matsuda always wanted to be loved that way that he did this. He wanted to be someone’s whole world. Because. When his mother forgot him. It was like he disappeared from this world.  
  
She swallowed the medicine and then spit it in his face. He loved sick people. He wanted to take care of them. Sick people. Were always apologizing to him. Hands drenched in sick sweat. Diseased hands clinging to him. Everything they touched felt tainted, like spreading decay.  
  
Filthy, filthy, filthy.  
Maybe he hated sick people.  
Maybe the reason he hurt Ryoko, Kamukura in a way that he could never take back was because he saw they were sick in the head and wanted to break them further.  
  
Maybe he was sick in the head.  
No, he wasn’t sick. He had to pretend to be well. A sick person couldn’t take care of others. 

He had to be better. He couldn’t fall for a little girl’s tantrums. He couldn’t throw a tantrum. Oh, that was exactly what he was doing.  
  
He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her down on the bed. Her just kept pushing, forcing all of his weight on her. He looked like he was about to do something horrible. He didn’t get angry at Komaeda. He never hated his mother. Even with Junko, he blamed himself for not being enough for her. He felt like he had gotten angry for the first time, he had no idea why she had finally triggered that reaction but she had.  
  
If this was what associating with other people was like, then Matsuda had been right to always want to be alone. He was a doctor, but they could all get a memory disease and die for all he cared. No, he had a better idea. He would take an ice pick to their eyes and do it himself. Nanami didn’t want to die, she wanted the pain to stop. She wanted to stop feeling. He could make her so stupid she wouldn’t even know what pain was.  
  
He pushed her away. He pinned her to the bed. He swallowed medicine, and then forced his lips over hers. She would choke it down. He was going to force it down her throat. He didn’t care if it was medicine or poison. She would lick the plate, and she would be grateful to him.   
  
He looked at her and realized for once she wasn’t struggling. She wasn’t fighting him on this. He felt so self-satisfied. But just satisfying yourself is lonely. He thought this is probably what happiness feels like, and then… that he regretted it.  
  
The way she just passively accepted whatever happened to her.  
As if she was unbothered by it. As if she was unattached to the whole world.  
He couldn’t stand the bored look in her eyes. Like he was the same as every other doctor who had mistreated her.  
  
Matsuda drew back from her gasping for breath. Nanami said nothing and wiped the medicine that stuck to her lips with the sleeves of her kimono.  
  
“I can’t stay awake babysitting you the whole time.”  
  
“Oh, so you can think for yourself. I thought you were pretty much useless unless an obnoxious girl with huge, fake, breasts told you what to do.”  
  
“You’re making it sound like I belong to her. Like she owns me.”  
  
“Oh no, I didn’t mean to imply that. That would be terribly rude. How could you possibly belong to someone who doesn’t even want you? My mistake.”  
  
Matsuda really wanted to throttle her right now, but god it was fun to bicker with her. He wondered if this was why Junko and Kumagawa always acted like such idiots when they were together in public.  
  
“You’re just mean, you know that? What kind of person spends every second being a little bitch even to the people trying to help them.” Matsuda said straightening up, and as he did so Mikan walked into the room.  
  
She had a bundle of papers in her hand. “M-m-matsuda-kun, I can help you…”  
  
“No thanks. Your help just kills people, psycho nurse. I think it’d be better for the collective good of the human race as a whole if you just locked yourself in a closet somewhere.”  
  
“I c-c-can’t come out of the closet?” Mikan looked like she was about to faint.  
  
“Rude boy, someone should scold you.” Nanami titled her head, smiling at an odd angle. “Do I have to tell you, or do you already know?”  
  
“I already know!” Matsuda said fanning himself with his clipboard. “God, you can’t just use a bad childhood as an excuse to be a bitch all the time. What is your problem, Matsuda-kun?”  
  
Talking to yourself was a clear sign of sanity. But he was the sane one, he had to be. Everyone else was allowed to be selfish, to react to their trauma, to go insane around him, but he had to be the one to keep his head above the surface of the water.  
  
He paced back and forth. He reached the wall, turned on his heel, and kept pacing. Matsuda wondered if it was like this for Kamukura. If this is what he did when stuck in such a cramped room. Did it start to feel like the white walls were crushing him? The world didn’t exist outside of his room. It might as well have ended. That meant he was all alone. He was locked in a single room and nobody would be coming for him.  
  
Matsuda spoke up, pushing his hair back from his face. “I can’t trust you enough to leave you alone because you’ll kill yourself, and if I go without sleep any longer, I’ll kill myself.”  
  
The closer they got to each other.  
The more they were exposed. The more they took in higher doses of each other.  
What was medicine became poison instead. 

Matsuda ever wondered if he was going to just process his emotions like a normal person and not a freak. Not every attraction had to be a fatal one.  
  
“I have a suggestion. Share the bed with me.” Nanami said, drawing her knees to her chest. “If I try to do anything in my sleep you’ll wake up.”  
  
“That’s unethical-”  
  
“If you had anything even resembling a sense of ethics I wouldn’t be alive, soooo….” She looked like she was about to roll her eyes. She rolled her eyes way too much at him. She was going to get dizzy and puke if she kept doing that. 

 

🦔

 

She lay underneath the blankets and Matsuda lay on top of them. Matsuda could hear everything. Her choked breaths. The small shaking of her body. Her faint heartbeat. The murmurs that escaped from her lips. He heard everything. Everything was so loud. She was suddenly so loud he was convinced he could hear her thoughts.  
  
In the pitch black room the soft glow on Nanami’s skin was his only light. He slept on the furthest edge of the bed. If Junko was someone he always wanted to be close to, to the point he did not mind sharing a bed with her then Nanami was someone he wanted to be as far away from as possible.  
  
He treated her like she was sick. Like she was contagious. She was both of those things actually. He was terrified of catching something from her. He slept with his clothes on. His whole body was uncomfortable and stiff. He didn’t feel like any part of him was capable of relaxing.  
  
He wanted sleep to take him. He wanted to rest his head against something soft and to be told it was alright. If he could, he would return to the days that Junko held him until he fell asleep. The only time he allowed himself to cry was when he hid so much of his face in her, that the world couldn’t see his expression.  
  
They were so close but he was hiding from Nanami. He made himself feel as small as possible. The second he got close to others he always revealed what a fucking child he was. He didn’t want a girlfriend. He didn’t even want a friend. He just wanted a mother to stroke his hair, and tell him that everything he had experienced up until this point had been a bad nightmare.He would forget it all, every friend he made, every person he betrayed, like he was Ryoko. It didn’t matter who got hurt, it had nothing to do with him, as long as he forgot. Running away, running away. Are you scared of her? Why do you look at a sick little girl like she’s some kind of monster?  
  
Why do sick people always apologize?  
I’m making her feel like she needs to apologize for something.  
  
As Matsuda realized that he opened his eyes. Nanami was much closer than he thought. He saw her eyes, pits of darkness. It was like she was comatose with her eyes wide open. And then Matsuda suddenly felt his body flip around. 

 _I keep forgetting._  
Matsuda realized as he was slammed back into the bed.  
_That I’m a dumbass._  
  
“So you got in bed with a murderer.” Nanami’s fingernails sharpened to claws that were capable of ripping his flesh apart. She held them at his throat, as she sat on him. “Without even thinking of the possibility that you might be killed?”

He didn’t even act suspicious of her. The only thing he was afraid of was that she might harm herself. Matsuda was all talk. He kept saying again and again that he wouldn’t trust others, but he trusted with everything he had.  
  
Because, To Yasuke, she was still just a patient. He didn’t even imagine the possibility she might hurt him. He didn’t even see her as capable of it. An ill girl. Even if he didn’t pity her, the way he acted so gentle like she might break at the slightest touch was completely patronizing. She wanted to remind him he was just as broken as she was.  
  
“Can I ask one thing?”  
  
Matsuda must have been getting used to the feeling of someone’s hands around his throat.  
  
“No, I think you talk too much.”  
  
“Then kill me to shut me up, or else you’ll be forced to listen.” Matsuda said and she hesitated, so, “Did you really want to die? Or did you just want the pain to stop? If you seriously want to die then killing me is the best option, because that little shit Kamukura will be upset that somebody else broke his favorite toy.”  
  
“What if I just feel like killing you because you annoy me.”  
  
“Well I can’t help that. My parents clearly didn’t give me enough attention growing up.”  
  
She was like the whole moon. He could feel the moon’s weight on his chest. He felt himself getting sucked into her gravity. The surface of the water. Calm and still like the surface of the water. Then, unfathomable depths. So deep you could drown in it. She was sopping wet with her own sweat.  
  
That’s no good. Your fingers might slip. You have to hold onto my neck tighter.  
  
“You’re broken. And yet you insist you’re not. Do you understand how aggravating that is?” Nanami let go of his neck. Matsuda almost felt disappointed. She intertwined her fingers with his. Her long fingers, perfect for spinning silk. Matsuda didn’t need butterflies, humans could not help but love beautiful things even when they were dangerous.  
  
He wanted to be tied up in someone else, because that meant they could never let go. But she... she was contagious.  
  
These feelings were a sickness, a disease, she infected whoever she touched. She was incurable. Once contracted it was fatal. She wanted to be inside him like worms in his brain. She longed for him the same way a parasite longed for a host. She wanted to be attached in a way that would be fatal if removed, she wanted to be more important than his own vital organs. If Matsuda fell ill with her, he would never forgive her, and she would never forgive herself.

 _This is a sickness._  
Nanami thought. She cursed herself for the fact that she was born with such a weak heart that was always waiting to give up on her.   
_Because of the heart I lust for everything about you._    
  
“It’s because you’re still useful to others that you can pretend everything is still alright. I want to take it away from you. You act like you’re strong, but your entire worth as a person is built around one thing. All I need to do is break your surgeon's fingers, the foundation you build yourself on, and it will all crumble. ” 

Matsuda when someone is in pieces in front of you, you don’t even see the broken pieces. You just start reassembling them in their head. I’m different. The entire world is fragmented. It’s always falling apart, so much so it’s overwhelming, why would I need to destroy the world like Enoshima Junko? It’s already too much for me. There’s so many pieces I couldn’t possibly comprehend all of them. What a silly girl. I want to fracture your vision just a little bit, so you can see the same things I see.  
  
“Yeah. I don’t want that to happen. I’d regret it.”  
  
“Oh. So even a tool like you who only gets used by others has some regrets of his own.”  
  
“Yeah, I’d suppose so. I guess I’d feel bad for arguing with Kamukura again… but mostly, my biggest regret would be that there’s a girl right in front of me on the brink of tears and I’m unable to help.” 

Nanami touched her face. It occurred to her in that moment she had no idea exactly what expression she was showing to him.  
  
“Is that a line?”  
  
“Please. Do you think I’m actually capable of talking to another human being without immediately putting my foot in my mouth.”  
  
“I suppose not.”  
  
Matsuda was capable of talking so casually when his heart was pounding in his chest because he was used to it he supposed. He really needed to stop mistaking adrenaline in his veins, and all the blood rushing to his head, for feelings of love.  
  
“Hey, listen. I thought my life was cursed. I didn’t have a father and my mother died. But, the time I spent with those two truly made me happy. Even if it was a lie, I think I was happy…” Junko, Kumagawa, the two people who told him it was okay to cry. “To me they are the most important things in the world, because of those two I can…”  
  
“...”  
  
“I can understand what it would be like for someone who never had a childhood friend, or a best buddy. Junko was exactly what I needed when I needed it. That’s why I always wanted to be that person for someone else.”  
  
“...”  
  
“And I know it’s not a fucking compettition but you genuinely have it worse than me don’t you? Sometimes it’s just a fact. Even if everybody has their own problems, you’re still way more on the losing end that everyone else. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. That doesn’t have to be a reason to pity yourself.”  
  
“...”  
  
If your problems suddenly don’t seem so bad. Then, can’t that be a reason to help someone?”

“Y-you… you’re no good Matsuda.”  
  
Nanami’s voice was panicked. Broken. Underneath a calm facade. Underneath her expressionless mask. She had been hiding how broken she was too. She was caught between being hooked up to a machine, and her own sense of pride. 

 _Oh. I get it Matsuda._ _  
_ _You didn’t grab my hand to pull me out of the water._ _  
_ _You were drowning with me._

“Ah. You remembered my name.”  
  
This was... a really stupid reason to be so happy. Matsuda thought so as he smiled. 


	58. A Nightmare on Elm Street

Ikkun being his usual, quirkless, self likened this experience to one a lonely child might have. 

Ikkun didn’t have a drop of creativity inside of him even as a child. Even his delusions were boring and derivative. He was a liar, maybe, but he just repeated the same lies that everyone else told themselves. He was the world’s most trite and cliche author in his own opinion, self important to the point of pretentiousness despite having nothing important to contribute to the world. 

Let’s pretend for a moment that he was normal though, stretch your imagination to its limit. A child just like any child, would want a friend and failing to make one would imagine one. They imagine a friend who would want to play with them whenever they were alone. A friend who would always talk to them. A friend who would never refuse them.  
  
That friend is their perfect complement. They’re painted with all of the colors that the child can only see in their dreams. A child is egocentric, they only know themselves, so any full person they imagine is going to be a reflection of them. Birthed from the ego. The two of them would be tied together by an invisible umbilical cord that stretched between them.  
  
However, such a person isn’t real. There’s no dream that won’t end in waking. Dreams are dreams because they end. That person. That friend. They were just a happy dream. When you wake up with tears in your eyes that’s the end.  
  
That’s all that person is. A dream as ephemeral as a flower reflected in a mirror, as the moon floating on the water. They imagine a full person, with a full life opposite to them on the other side of the mirror. An imaginary friend to play with. But it’s impossible to be with them, because once the imagination ends, once the dream ends, that person ceases to exist. They disappear. They vanish. Touch the surface of the water, and the ripples will disturb the reflection on the surface. 

You’re together in your dreams, but alone in reality. The imaginary and real can never mingle. The child remains alone.  
  
But what if.  
That imaginary friend came to life. What if they had been living a separate life from him all along. What if they cut the umbilical cord themselves, so they could wander away and find him again. A person who always rose his right hand when Ikkun rose his left. A person who lived the life that Ikkun could only imagine living in his dreams. A person made up of all of his worst nightmares, and all of his worst tendencies. 

If he met such a person then how would he greet him?  
  
“Yo, human failure," Ikkun said.   
  
“Yo, damaged goods," Zerozaki said. 

Something like that. That was the best way that Ikkun could describe a conversation with Zerozaki, his imaginary friend, a lonely child talking to himself. His encounter with Zerozaki. A boy he never wanted to meet. A boy he had been waiting his entire life to meet.  
  
The two of them were lying on the ground. If Zerozaki turned his head he would see Ikkun’s feet, and if Ikkun did the same he’d see Zerozaki’s. Even though neither of them were looking each other in the face they continued talking, like they had been at this for hours.  
  
They were both people who hated being close to others, and yet they lined their bodies up like it was the natural thing to do. Love at first sight really must exist, after all vain people fall in love every day when they look in the mirror even though they’ve barely talked to that person.  
  
“Say, Zerozaki.” Ikkun brought up something that weighed on his mind. Well. Weight was the wrosnt word to use. Things, ideas, feelings always floated around Ikkun. “What’s it feel like to kill someone?” 

“You would know, you killed that guy like… shit. Five hours ago. I feel like I’m going crazy spending this long talking to myself.”  
  
“I didn’t kill him.” If you were to punch Ikkun in the face right now, he would just take the hit. It’s because he spent all of his time dodging things like responsibility, expectations, they hurt more than fists. 

“You talked him into suicide! Whaddaya call that, exactly? Asking him on a date?”  
  
“If I were to go on a date, somebody would probably be dead by the end of it. That’s why nobody has ever fallen in love with me or asked me out.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s the reason why, I’m sure it has nothing to do with your personality.”

 Those things tended to happen around Ikkun, but he didn’t have the luxury of even calling it bad luck. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything. He wanted to kill himself. I doubt my words could have persuaded him one way or the other. Nobody ever really listens to what I say. Listening to me is such a bad idea. I don’t even listen to myself. If they do listen to me, that’s on them, not me.”  
  
“Hahh,” Zerozaki gave an exaggerated sigh, “You were so hard on a guy who never even killed anyone just for feeling the urge to kill others, but now you’re acting all lovey dovey with a discriminant, merciless, murderer like me? There's seriously something wrong with you."  
  
“This is the first time I've heard. You're the only one who had the bravery to tell me to my face.  To think I've been living in ignorant bliss of my faults all this time."

"You think you're so clever don't you?"

"No, not really."

  
“Jeez, how am I not the most fucked up person in the room!? All these serial killers are making me look less special! How am I supposed to stand out when everyone’s a fucking weirdo who stabs people?” It all just seemed so tired and overdone now. 

“It’s not a competition. Everyone is special in their own way.” 

Ikkun didn’t mind losing.  
For example if someone asked him to play a game of chess and it was guaranteed he would lose one hundred times, he would still play all one hundred times. However, if there was a chance he might win, if he had to compete in any way, he would never play. He didn’t hate losing, he hated competition. He was thoroughly put off by the idea of vying for others over something. He hated getting compared to others and falling up short, or maybe he just hated effort. 

He didn’t like fighting either, and never made any friends. The idea that any friend he made he might lose one day over some small fight was enough reason to avoid them. He was exactly the same as someone who avoided romantic relationships because they were afraid of going through a breakup.  
  
“Shaddup! That’s loser talk.”  
  
“It makes sense that I would talk like a loser. I am in fact, a loser.” 

Zerozaki suddenly got worked up, and kicked Ikkun in the side. Ikkun reacted with a dull ‘ow’ and wondered how one person could have so much energy. “How the fuck am I supposed to know what it feels like to kill someone?”  
  
“Well, you kill people right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“What do you feel… when you do that?”  
  
“Why would I be having feelings? I’m not some stupid fucking crybaby kid. Oh, boo hoo, I murder people, my life is so sad. Please pity me more than my victims. What about Munakata? How do you feel about that? How do you feel about the fact that someone died around you?”  
  
It was a straightforward question that Ikkun could have easily asked himself. He folded his hands to make like he was thinking, when he wasn’t thinking about anything at all, not really. “Zerozaki, here’s how I feel about that.”  
  
“Okay, let’s have it.”  
  
“I talked way too much. I must have looked really stupid. My throat hurts from wasting all that time talking to him.”

"You seem like the type who really loves hearing yourself talk."

"No, in fact I hate it. I can't stand the sound of my own voice. I'm always like why won't that guy just shut up already, and then I realize I'm that guy."  
  
“See, see. It’s not really the kind of thing that makes you feel this way or that. I don’t really feel much of anything.” 

“You don’t? You don’t feel like it’s good or refreshing or anything like that? You don’t think the despair of it all makes it more fun?” 

“Listen dumbass, what do you think I am, some kind of sicko?” He said with a heaping helping of condescension. Ikkun thought committing grisly murders sure seemed like a funny way of not being a sicko, but it would be easier to keep his thoughts to himself so he did.

“Cuz you see, it’s like this. I mean I am a murderer. But I’m not what you would call a ‘lust murderer’. I don’t know how the fuck to explain it.”  
  
“I don’t know, like… loving someone so much you want to kill them so someone else can’t have them.”  
  
“No…? What the fuck is wrong with you man? Why would I want to murder somebody I wanted to date? Then, I wouldn’t be able to date them either. You know, cuz they’re dead.  Doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
“I was just thinking about someone…”  
  
“I’m not really one for deep thoughts you know.” 

“Most people who call themselves deep are really just shallow and pretentious. I would know, I’m one of them.”  
  
“Well, it’s not like I’m thinking _I really want to kill this guy._ When I kill them. They just sort of end up dead when I’m done stabbing them.”  
  
“Yes. Dying is a natural consequence of being stabbed. Unfortunately.”  
  
“Oi, oi, oi, don’t talk down to me. I’m a dumbass but I sure as hell don’t want to be talked down to by another dumbass. That’s a case of the blind leading the blind, or rather the ass leading the ass.”  
  
“I can’t believe you have these thoughts in your head and then just say them out loud.” Ikkun sighed, sounding a little moody. (Though he wasn’t sure what his mood was, what did it mean to be moody when you repressed all of your feelings at once?). “Let me reprhase, what is murder to you?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Two meanings buried in that word.  
It was worth nothing.  
And therefore, it cost nothing.  
  
“How about this then? Do you understand why other people commit murder?”  
  
“How am I supposed to fucking know?”  
  
“You don’t?” Ikkun asked.  
  
“Well first all of that question requires me to understand people. And understanding people requires me giving a fuck about people, and I don’t, period. Whether or not they’re killers. I don’t even understand myself. And I certainly don’t give a fuck about that guy, either.”

“So people just die on their own, and you have nothing to do with it?”  
  
“Nah, of fucking course I have something to do with it. People die when I kill them.”  
  
“How do you kill them?”

With knives. With his fists. With his hands. WIth his teeth.  
Zerozaki felt like Ikkun was asking him a more fundamental question than that. Ulike Zerozaki who was happy just glancing at the surface of the water, Ikkun wanted to dive deep. He struck Zerozaki as someone who just thought, and thought forever and never did anything. It made Zerozaki glad he was an idiot who didn’t have to waste time thinking.  
  
“Have you ever read The Stranger?”  
  
“I read it once, but I didn’t really understand it.”  
  
“Fuck you.” Zerozaki grinded his teeth. The sound of grinding chains, rattled in his head. “You’ve got the self awareness of roadkill, you know that?”  
  
How appropriate.  
A runover corpse left on the side of the road, that everybody looks away from and waits for somebody else to clean up.  
  
“I’ve found that self-awareness requires having a self in the first place.”  
  
“Well the thing about the stranger is, everybody would have felt the desire to kill someone in that moment. It just flashes by their mind, but they have a switch in their brain that tells them not to kill people just because they feel like it. For me, that switch is broken.”  
  
“Is that what that scene was about? I didn’t really understand it.”  
  
“Seriously, fuck off.”  
  
“Do you want to kill someone, Zerozaki?”  
  
“Can I?”  
  
“I’m asking whether you want to. You…”  
  
“Icky-kun. I’ve killed plenty of people before this. True, I killed them all, of my own will, acting  on my own urges. But, I didn’t particularly want to kill them. I didn’t have any malice towards them. This overwhelming urge to kill just welled up inside me: and that’s when it occured to me: I could kill this person. And so I did. I had no real reason.”  
  
“So now what? After you finish talking to me are you just going to go find somebody else to kill?”  
  
“Why? Are you going to get jealous? Fucking freak.” Hitoshiki’s real emotions crossed his face, and he didn’t particularly like it, the hesitant look in his eyes, the unsteady way his lip wavered, he looked too much like Ikkun. “People - assuming I’m still a person, that is, people don’t decide to act based on their impulse alone.”  
  
“You are a person, Zerozaki. I guarantee it. You’re just weak as a person.”  
  
Too weak to resist the urge to kill people. 

Too weak to resist the urge to be around others.  
Zerozaki and Ikkun. Connected by trauma, by weakness.  
They were their worst selves around each other.  
  
Ikkun was just making it up as he went along.  
Zerozaki couldn’t believe it, he let those made up words actually touch his heart. 

“Are you two done making out yet?” 

Angie suddenly spoke up, sitting on the couch of the karaoke room.  The big scary serial killer screamed and scrambled away from her until his back hit the wall, while Ikkun did not even react. 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!”  
  
“I wasn’t spooning a serial killer right now, just so you know.” Ikkun replied neutrally.  
  
“If I’m doing it, it’s called knifing!”  Zerozaki got to his feet and bonked her ont he head to be sure she was real.“Seriously Ange, what are you a ghost?”  
  
“I can contact several ghosts for you if you want, but there are several long distance charges for contacting the afterlife.” Angie said.  
  
“Fuck. Tell em, I’ll call collect.” 

Ikkun was surprised to see two self absorbed people getting along so well. Well, it surprised him when other people got along in general. If humans were supposed to be social creatures then what was he?  
  
“Who is this?” Ikkun asked.  
  
“She’s my hostage.”  
  
“Are you going to kill her?”  
  
“Do you know how taking a hostage works?” Zerozaki looked incredulous.  
  
“I don’t know how anything works, really.” Ikkun shrugged.  
  
“Hey, Ange can we bring this guy along? He’s a riot.”  
  
“No I’m not funny at all. Don’t listen to him.”  
  
“Hmm, sure! He seems to never want to make a choice for himself, and desperate to find a place where he belongs. That makes him very susceptible to joining a cult.”  
  
“Sounds good, I’ve always wanted someone to take all my decisions away from me.” Ikkun said drily.  
  
“Ange makes all the decisions.”  
  
“Are you sure you’re not being held hostage by her? It’s okay, you can tell me Zerozaki if you’re in danger.” Ikkun pretended to be sympathetic. He was a terrible actor. And not good at pretending to be anything.  
  
“Quit it! I may be a serial killer, but at least I’m not a little bitch like you,” Zerozaki said.  
  
“I may be a little bitch, but at least I’m not a serial killer,” Ikkun replied.  

Zerozaki never thought he would find this, even if he left his brother's side and searched the whole world. Next to him there were two people he did not want to kill.

Before they could waste more time talking, the monitor that was displaying karaoke lyrics a moment ago suddenly had its display hijacked to show a broadcast of Medaka's face. 

"Hey. Its that scary girl!"

"Do you really have the right to call anyone scary?"

"Shaddup. I'm cute like a little puppy."

"A feral wolf pup foaming at the mouth, maybe."

"I know you're trying to insult me but you just made me sound fucking awesome. ‘Sides you’re way scarier than I am.”  
  
“I am just a normal guy…”  
  
“See, terrifying!”  
  
Angie feeling like she was not getting enough attention suddenly shoved herself between those two. Zerozaki was smiling on one side of her, and Ikkun scowling on the other side. 

"Make room for Atua, you two!"

 **Number One: Zerozaki Hitoshiki, kills impulsively.  
** **Number Two: Ii ??????, kills indifferently.  
** **Number Three: Yonaga Angie, kills artistically.**  
  


🦔

 

**One Day Ago.**

Munakata and medaka had been fighting to confront one another, but suddenly in the middle of it Munakata just stopped, as if he just wasn’t into it anymore. 

Munakata Kyosuke.  
White. Pure white. Like the moon. White hair. Blue white eyes. White eyelashes. Skin lacking any pigmentation. Insecure. Like the moon. Doubting himself. Like the moon. Surrounded by pure darkness. Like the moon. Just hanging there in the sky, his feet not touching the ground, just like the moon.  
  
“I finally realized what hope is, it’s agony.” 

Simple pain and agony, he hated those things. Stronger than anyone else, but also, more fragile. Munakata’s eyes reflected the sky above them. There was no moon in the sky, and even though the moon produced no light of its own a night sky without a moon just looked empty. The sky was devoid of even stars. 

Munakata put his hand on Medaka’s arm as if begging for help. An adult man clinging onto a little girl. Then while staring at his best friend Sakakura, he began his monologue. “Ah, yes, I’m the one who hurt him. It wasn’t despair it was me.”  
  
“Munakata-sensei?” Fear creeped into Medaka’s voice. She realized until just now she had never been afraid of another person until this point. She liked people after all, she wanted to like them.  
  
“I did it. I was able to kill Sakakura.”  
  
“Sensei?”  
  
Munakata undid his tie with his free hand and threw it away from him. It was like he untied the knots holding him together. “I wondered how far I would go for the sake of hope. Even I didn’t know what the answer would be. How far would I go, what would I have to do, to make myself stop? You can say I’ll kill every last person on earth to stop despair, but that’s an idea, that’s just not practical.”  
  
His nonsensical babbling sounded a little bit like Komaeda’s, Medaka observed. Munakata reached into the inside pocket of the white jacket he was wearing, and slowly pulled out a gun. Despite the obvious danger, Medaka was too confused to stop him.  
  
“But… even after Sakakura hit me, I didn’t stop. In fact… I went ahead and ran him through with my sword.”  
  
The faint smile that made her think of both Kumagawa and Komaeda was gone now, and replaced by immeasurable sadness. 

  
“If I can kill him. Then, I could kill my grandfather.”  
  
Unease.  
Medaka felt a serious unease.  
An uncanny feeling, as if the person she was looking at in front of her was almost human but not quite. 

“Uh…”  
  
Munakata stared off into nothingness. “I’m sure I could kill a little girl like you who only wants to help people. A person who only means well like young Komaeda. A naive but dear boy who doesn’t know any better like Naegi. And…”  
  
Munakata’s voice which was always as sharp and pointed as broken glass, suddenly softened with fondness.  
  
“Oh yeah. It’s true. I’m certain even though I’d never let anything hurt her again…” Komaeda said he had a selfless love for the people around him. He never expected anything in return. Munakata experienced a one-sided love too, but, he expected everything from the people he loved. He took possession of them. “I was going to kill Yukizome.”  
  
He looked as if he had just woken up from a long dream.  
Medaka could see that now that he had woken from his dream, Munakata was crying.  
  
“It wasn’t protecting her. I wasn’t protecting anyone. I protected my small, self… because I was afraid.” The hidden gun that Munakata had pulled out from the inseam of his jacket, he lifted it and pressed it to his own temple.  
  
Medaka was so confused, even though she could have easily resolved the situation she couldn’t do a single thing, because doing something meant resolving to do something and every choice she could make at the moment felt wrong.  
  
What do you do when there are nothing but wrong choices?  
Kumagawa would choose anyway. _You’re so strong, Kumagawa._  
“W-wait, Munakata-sensei, what are you doing?” It was like by cutting apart Sakakura, Munakata had torn a terrible hole in himself. “You gotta be kidding! I can’t tell when other people are joking but… This isn’t funny! Even Kumagawa wouldn’t think this is funny!”  
  
“I think I shouldn’t be around anymore. I’m only going to get worse from here, and make life worse for my friends…I really thought I could help people.” Tears dripped from his eyes, and he smiled as if to say goodbye to Sakakura who was still sleeping. “This is all because… I was hope… because people called me hope. But I was despair for my closest friends.”  
“What are you doing? Aren’t you sick of people dying? What will that solve? How is that hope?”  
  
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m fed up with hope? Nobody’s more sick of it than I am”  
  
It felt so heavy. It felt so heavy. The trigger in his fingers.  
He didn’t have a mother, so he had to be strong. His family always whispered about him and his adoptive parent, so he had to be better than anyone else to prove them wrong. He felt like he had come from a dark place, and the other children were raised in the light so he had to be stronger than them. He had to be strong so they would want to be near him. He had to be so strong that nobody would see his deficiencies. He was sick, so he had be stronger than his weak body.  
  
Munakata simply did not know how to be weak, just like Medaka. If only someone had told him he didn’t need to be strong. The only strength he needed was the small amount of strength it took to pull the trigger with his pointer finger.  
  
“I’m not doing this for hope. I’m doing this for myself.” 

Selfish. 

Everyone around her was so selfish. Medaka wondered why it had taken her this long to realize it. She remembered when Ajimu held her gun to her head in exactly the same way. In the end Ajimu was, a selfish girl who played with a boy like he was her toy. People have to think of themselves, because they have to take care of themselves, because they’re not like me.  
  
They only ever thought of themselves. They were simply too weak to think of others. Medaka figured out why Munakata’s touch was so unnerving to her. Everyone around it, it was like everyone around her was laying hands on her, begging at her feet, like she was some kind of goddess.  
  
The more their hands touched her the dirtier she felt.  
Dirty nails raking across her skin, clawing apart her flesh. It felt like she was being dragged down. They were saying. _Why are you alive? Yeah, why are you alive?_ Nanami and Maguro’s voices speaking to one another. I’m alive to make people happy. I know it’s unfair that I’m still alive, but you died, that’s why I’m doing my best to take care of others. _You should have died._ She. She didn’t want to be alone. She just wanted everyone to. Everyone to be friends. She. She. I. I. Never wanted to kill you. 

The bullet left the chamber but Medaka moved faster than that. She redirected the gun so it fired uselessly into the wall, and then stole it from Munakata’s hand. _Yes, that’s right. You’re not selfish like he is. You were just trying to give everyone hope._ Ajimu Najimi’s arms wrapped around her neck from behind in a chilling embrace. _You have to keep going. Keep going until everyone’s happy._

She realized her determination was not a heroic quality at all. She had just been born this way. It was something she didn’t have a choice in. She had to keep fighting.  
  
“What are you going to say that everybody you killed so far? If you were wrong then why did you kill people in the first place? Why do you get to stop now? Why do you just get to give up!?”

Medaka grabbed Munakata by the collar and shook him. She knew all the screaming in the world would not vent the anger inside of her.  
  
“You weren’t doing this for yourself! You were doing it for everyone else! Everyone’s hopes are riding on you, so you don’t just get to stop!”  
  
“Kurokami stop it… I’m only human after all.”  
  
Medaka really wanted to ask, why did Munakata get to cry and break down but not her. All of the tears she had evaporated when she got angry. “Why does everyone… why does everyone get to be human, but me?” 

That was the last bit of whining she allowed herself. Medaka suddenly kicked Munakata down. She pinned his back against the wall with her foot. In a violent action, she pried his jaw open and shoved the barrel of the gun into his mouth.  
  
This was punishment.  
This was an execution.  
She had to do it for all the people Munakata had killed up until this point. He was blackened.  
  
Humans just couldn’t be beautiful no matter how hard they tried. They needed someone to love them. They needed someone to guide them. All of the senseless violence of the world needed someone to justify it, otherwise it just hurt, it was just pain. They needed a god, so they created Kamukura, but he was a flawed creation.  
  
Because there was no way something like god could exist in this world.  
God had to exist, people needed god, but he didn’t.  
The moment you have that realization you can’t go on living. You don’t die, either. It’s just a dead end. What’s left after that realization isn’t even despair, it’s a pitch black void. It’s the emptiness of Kumagawa Misogi’s smile. It’s the nothingness that Ajimu Najimi felt, a feeling that none of this is even real. It’s absurd. It’s a joke. A world filled with meaningless pain and suffering where both of those things never seems to amount to anything.  
  
A world that Munakata was tired of.  
A world that Medaka was starting to get bored of.  
Is that the world Enoshima Junko was looking at? Is that the world she saw through those red eyes that were so much like Medaka’s?

“You don’t get to decide that. Only god gets to decide who lives and who dies.”  
  
Medaka said as she cocked the gun.  
  
“I’ll become your god.” 

Medaka realized if she could control everything, absolutely everything in this game then nobody would have to suffer. If only she was the mastermind, she would make it so all of the death, all of the despair would lead to hope in the end. It was then she realized the only problem was the randomness of it all, that it was all outside of her control.  
  
She killed Nanami without meaning to. If only she had controlled herself in that moment. If she was capable of controlling everyone else, she would harm everyone with one hand, and she would heal them with the other. Humans were helpless. If she wanted to help them she had to be something other than human. 

 _That’s it… I just want to help everyone._  
  
She would make the perfect mastermind because she knew better. She was the only one here who wasn’t selfish. She was the only one here who could think of somebody besides herself.

 _“This time do it properly, Medaka-chan.”_ _  
_  
Medaka smiled.  
  
 _“It doesn’t matter if it’s a good thing or bad thing. Don’t do it for yourself. Do it for everyone.”_

She copied people, and then always surpassed them at their own talent.  
She was sure she could become a better Enoshima Junko, than Junko herself. You. You. You. You just imitate everyone around you because you can’t become like them? You’re right, I can’t. I can’t because I’m better than them. I can’t even guess what it must be to live the life of a human being.  
  


Killing Munakata. Killing herself.  
She planned to become something much better than herself.  
Before she could pull the trigger something slammed into her. Sakakura who had been listening all along suddenly came to life, and even tied up had the strength to throw himself in the way and knock her off her feet.  
  
“Damnit! I’m not done with him yet. I’m going to make him pay for seven years of putting up with his ass.” 

That was the last thing Munakata remembered before he blacked out. 

 **BLACK SCENE.** **  
****GAME THREE OVERTIME.**

When he finally regained consciousness, he noticed that in addition to a bangle around his wrist, he was also handcuffed to another person.  
  
He had given up on hope, the hope that hurt his friends, but he had also made that girl give up on him. Munakata realized that the weight of his sins was dragging him down, just like the weight of these chains.  
  
He couldn’t blame despair any longer. He only had himself to blame. He was left all alone. That was what happened, when you killed the only two friends you had in the whole world. “I’m right fucking here.” Juzo on the other end of the chains jerked him forward and grabbed him by the neck. “What the hell? Do you think you can go crazy and die after everything you did to Yukizome? After everything you did to me? Your life doesn’t belong to yourself anymore.” 

 “Sakakura.”  
  
“I’m going to make you pay. I swear to god I’ll make you pay.” 

Sakakura beat his fists gently against Munakata. There was no force behind the blow at all. Munakata always wondered why Sakakura considered himself a violent person. There was nobody more soft. There was nobody kinder to his friends.  
  
There was no such thing as heroes, but if they did exist, they would look like Sakakura. This is what caring for others truly looked like, what it felt like. Sakakura was stronger than anyone else, because he actually did care, he did his best for his friends. He was one of the rare few who genuinely cared in this world. Munakata preferred ideas to people. No he just… he just couldn’t trust others.  
  
Sakakura had never betrayed him, because Munakata never trusted him in the first place. He kept him at a distance, and used him more like a tool than a friend. If they really were friends Sakakura should have been able to tell him anything, Sakakura should have never been afraid of him. 

 _I’m jealous._  
  
It’s not that he was violent, Sakakura was truly strong to the center of his being.  Munakata saw himself for what he really was and tried to kill himself immediately. He could not believe that Sakakura saw him a long time ago, and tried to love that person instead.  
  
Suddenly a nearby television screen turned on. Medaka’s face appeared on it.  
Sakakura stood up.  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
“To clean up your mess. Because apparently that’s just my whole fucking life now.”  
  
“Eh… Wait.”  
  
“If you even think about sitting around and whining I’m going to drag you by the neck.”  
  
“Wait for me, Sakakura.”   
  
 **Number Four: Sakakura Juzo, Kills with fists.  
** **Number Five: Munakata Kyosuke, Kills with zealotry.**

  
🦔  
  
Fuyuhiko realized he was lying on the ground next to Peko. He woke up with a scream. “Aaaaaaahhhh! Peko! We’re supposed to sleep in separate bedrooms until we’re married, otherwise it’s indecent.”  
  
“Young master for the hundredth time what if someone comes to kill you in your sleep?”  
  
They really had been arguing about the same things since they were kids. Pekoyama rubbed her head and retied her blindfold.  
  
“The young master certainly is energetic this morning. How charming of him.” Kirumi said, sitting behind the two of them as if diligently waiting for them to wake up. She had made tea in the meantime, apparently, and sippsed a cup while two others sat on a mat next to her.  
  
“What? Ugh, what even happened?”  
  
“While we were dispatched to search for Shiranui by Kamakura-sama, you two were hit in the head and abducted by Kurokami-sama.”  
  
“Eh, what about you?” Fuyuhiko said looking at Kirumi. “Did she get you too.”  
  
“No, we just talked it out like reasonable adults and I agreed to come willingly. The young master is useless on his own after all.” Kirumi said.  
  
“I couldn’t stop Kurokami. I’m useless against her.” Peko said, hanging her head in shame.  
  
“It’s fucking Kurokami we’re talking about! That’s like asking you to defend me from a live tiger!”

“I could easily kill a tiger. I wouldn’t get distracted by its cuteness, or its fluffiness whatsoever. Show me a tiger right now, for your sake I’d…”  
  
“Oi! Calm down already, and drink your goddamn tea, Peko.”  
  
Peko started to pout. He should at least notice the huge bump in her head wounded her pride a little bit. What if Medaka had seriously tried to kill them, what would she have done then? He didn’t understand her feelings at all, and how was she supposed to understand herself if her own childhood friend couldn’t.  
  
“She said she was gathering up all of the killers in this game to this mall.” Kirumi analyzed.  
  
“What abou Sonia and Gundham?”  
  
“They’re with Kamukura at the moment. She didn't touch them, I think because she fears him. Tsumiki-sama as well is hiding in the hospital, and she doesn’t want to go there as it’s the place that Nanami-sama died.”  
  
“Yeah, well don’t tell Hinata that she’s scared of him that’s going to go straight to his head.” Fuyuhiko grumbled. "His forehead's big enough already..."   
  
"If you say his forehead is too big, he'll start to get insecure." Pekoyama said gently.   
  
 **Number Six, Pekoyama Peko, kills for her master.  
Number Seven, Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko, kills for his family.  
Number Eight: Tojo Kirumi, kills under orders. **  
  
Before their conversation could continue, the television screen suddenly turned on. A nervous looking boy appeared on the braodcast, with a wide smile and closed eyes. He had the face of a fox, and the hidden fangs of an albino snake.  
  
“Wow, 100 thousand viewers already!? Hyaaaa… I’m getting nervous. Erm… What was I supposed to begin with again? Oh, right, I will make a self introduction.Hi, hi, I’m Killer Killer! Well, not everyone will belive just because I’m saying it all of a sudden. I have to present actual proof to my dear audience.”  
  
Shuuji brought up Munakata Kei’s body onscreen. He shoved the boy’s face into the camera.  
  
“I brought a serial killer for this. And then we… Ayyyyy!”  
  
He jabbed a knife straight through Kei’s body. No blood came out, because the body was long dead. Shuuji was just making a show out of things. Shuuji quickly was overcome with nausea, and covered his mouth with his hand. “Like this, any human being can easily kill another person, but nice kids don’t do that. Isn’t that right, Medaka-chan?”  
  
Stone-faced.  
As if human emotions were beneath her.  
Medaka just watched.  
  


How many times did god watch indifferently as people died, after all.  
  
“In order to read the world of murder I have been laboriously killing serial killers, but. It’s no . It’s no good, Medaka-chan. It’s no good, and therefore it’s bad. I don’t want to keep getting my suit dirty, I like wearing the color white way too much… These stains are impossible to get out.”  
  
Shuuji continued to ramble before he suddenly looked at the screen dead on.  
  
“So from now on, if you want to kill so badly then you can just all kill each other for all I care! Everyone locked in this mall is a killer, the last one of you left alive, is the culprit! There, I did it! I solved the mystery! I’m not a killer, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m the great detective after all!”  
  
Shuuji bashed his head against the camera a few times. The lens cracked and the screen got covered in his blood. Apparently, he wanted to demonstrate to everybody how sane he was.  
  
“The last one of you killers can meet me. Until then, bye bye!” 

Takumi watched the screen from somewhere else in the mall far away from everyone else. When he saw Shuuji's face onscreen, he drew a smile on it with his own blood. Then he punched the monitor screen repeatedly until it broke.   
  
That wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to kill the image. He wanted to have the real one right in front of him. He wanted the living, breathing, real one, and then he wanted to kill him so he would never breathe again. 

He touched the knife jammed into his side, and felt a wave of pain through his entire body. 

He finally knew what love felt like, it was like a permanent wound in your body. He never wanted this wound to scab over and heal. He'd keep picking the scab if he had to.   
  
When did I… become like that? When did he fall in love with bloodshed and licking other people’s wounds? Was it the time he saw all his classmates die and heard the sound of his own heartbeat quickeing? The day Ikusaba Mukuro killed not only his classmates, but the boy in the locker, causing something else to crawl out instead that looked like Takumi, and acted awkwardly like Takumi, but wasn’t him. The day before it he was a normal boy who was just a little bit awkward, but the day after he didn’t know who he was, someone else maybe… Or maybe the moment he killed his mother and father for no reason, other than that he found their crying to be a little bit annoying. The time when Shuuji hugged him immediately after discovering their corpses, and said he would never leave him alone again, and Takumi could only think about how irritatingly clingy Shuuji was. Other people chafed him. They rubbed against his skin, and irritated him like he was allergic. Was it from them on? When he resisted a man who was trying to kidnap him, and accidentally ended up killing him? After getting rid of all evidence, and calling up Shuuji, he sat on a swing in the park until Shuuji arrived, all alone, swinging back and forth. When Shuuji got there, he finally lost his patience and tried to kill him too, and the look in Shuunji’s eyes as if there was nothing there. How him and Shuuji avoided each other after that. Little by little, no more like in big chunks, everything was taken from Takumi.  
  
And so Takumi ended up as an empty shell. He only had a passing resemblance to a human.  
He looked like half of a person.  
Traumatized children make split personalities.  
It felt almost like Shuuji was someone he had made up to deal with losing everyone, but… Shuuji was real. Because Shuuji was a real person everything felt so real around him. 

He hated being around Shuuji. He had even fled the country once just to avoid him. 

But…  
Nobody could take Shuuji from him. 

Shuuji was all he had left, after all. When everybody else in his life died, and he dropped out of life, it was Shuuji who stayed with him. 

“I’ll take, I’ll take. I’ll take Shuuji’s life.” 

He grabbed the knife from his side and pulled it out. He had to thank Shuuji for giving him a gift. Even though he started to bleed from the wound again he ignored it. He placed his hand against the wall. The tendons in his wrist rose up, resembling violin strings.  
  
He started to cut them. He needed to remove the chain around his wrist that forbid him from killing people. When he had sawed a little bit into his skin, his bangle suddenly rang.  
  
 **DEATH OF MUNAKATA KEI REGISTERED.** **  
****DOPPELGANGER RULE ACTIVATED.**

The bracelet suddenly came off on its own. It split in two and turned off. It no longer gave out any signals, or commands, or anything like that. Takumi had stabbed himself for no good reason. Well, there was always a good reason to stab yourself.   
  
He had no idea what was happening, but Takumi never really knew what was going on. He was kind of an oblivious guy. If it had nothing to do with murder than he didn't really think about it. 

“Ahahaha I’ve never felt this way about someone before. I hope he feels the same way. I don’t want to make things awkward between us. Don’t make it weird. Oh, no, I think I just made it weird. It’s fine. It’s fine. Nothing is ever fine, ever, but it’s fine.”  
  
Takumi curled his fingers around the knife, and brought it to its lips.  
It tasted cold, just like Shuuji.  
  
“Unrequited feelings are just so lonely, so let’s slice and dice each other to pieces, Shuuuuuji!” 

 **Number Nine: Hijirihara Takumi, Kills what he loves.  
** **BONUS LEVEL. START.  
** **KILLER KILLER BATTLE ROYALE.**


	59. Misery

It was like flowers had taken root in her. In her brain, in her eyeballs, covering her body, the roots spread out under the surface of her skin. As the roots dug deeper she could feel it. It was like her flesh being pulled apart and separated. It was like her sinews being stretched to their limit. The roots dug into her, consuming her, like worms crawling around and biting small pieces of her with their mouths for sustenance. 

Nanami Yasuri’s entire body was a garden. She had a flower of crowns on her head that made her bleed. There was no comfortable position to lie in, because every small movement she made drove the thorns deeper and deeper into her flesh.    
  
A blooming, thriving garden consuming her. Nanami could feel the flowers growing between the cracks in her bones. Breathing became a laborious thing, because pollen filled up her lungs, and inflamed the inside of her throat.    
  
She had gotten so delirious that the colors of flowers all blurred and blended together like paint, and then, like bloodshed, a familiar crimson red trickled out. Even if Nanami were unable to see colors, or she were blinded, she would still recognize that red. Red spider lilies. They were beautiful. Agonizing, but beautiful.    
  
She could feel them growing on the back of her eyeballs. The petals slowly unfurled in the empty cavity that reached to her brain. Someone had sprinkled seeds into her brain, so the roots could grow deeply into the many layers like a hand with its fingers slowly grpiping tighter, and tighter, crushing her internal organs.    
  
Her lungs spasmed. Her heart murmured. It felt like something was strangling her veins. A body consumed by flowers, slowly eaten from the inside out, poetic but ultimately fatal.    
  
That was what dying felt like.   
But the worst part wasn’t the pain.   
It was that she didn’t die.    
  
Hell was hell not because you were tortured, but because it never ended. If you ate nothing but candy every day, it would quickly become hell too. Just when she had given up, just when she thought her brain stem had been cut, someone pulled her back above the surface of the water.    


It was like washing up on a beach. It was like having your head dunked underneath the water again and again, and then suddenly dragged out. Even though you don’t want to live you instinctually gasp for air, and fill up your lungs when the act of breathing itself is painful. It was disorienting, dizzy, and completely helpless. If she had died at least she would have some control over that, but not dying wasn’t a part of her plan. All of this time she had been living with full knowledge she would die one day, so what did living after she was supposed to have died even mean? 

Matsuda dragged her out of the dirt. He robbed her grave. She would have been fine with dying, but at this moment she was not fine. I never asked. I never asked. I won’t thank you. If mother had killed her, if father had killed her, back then she would have been grateful.    
  
The worst part wasn’t the hurting, it was the healing. She could feel her body already, slowly starting to patch up the wounds. Someone took a thread and needle to her heart, and stabbed it again and again, pulling the string tight until the hole closed itself. Her body healed knowing full well, she would only be sicker later, she would only tear up more holes inside of herself.    
  
Why did she heal?   
It was almost like some small part of her was clinging to life.   
Foolish.    
Even if she wanted to live now after having her life saved by this stupidly kind boy, all his efforts would extend her life a few years at most, years she would spend living unable to leave this bed.    
  
The worst part was how pathetic this all was.She used to be a monster now she was just pitiful. Someone like her who always felt she was dying should have at least been able to die proerly. She couldn’t even manage that, she only died a little bit. She was dying a little bit every day now, and she still wouldn’t…   
  
Flowers should just be stepped on before they ever bloom, that was kindness to her. 

Matsuda pushed a cold compress onto her forehead. It was like trying to put out a fire with a few ice cubes. If he wanted to smother the flames inside of her he should drown her. She knew he wasn’t going to. What an impotent man.    
  
She had disrobed again. The upper part of her kimono hung at her waist, and her entire upper body was exposed. Her skin was so discolored by her fever, she looked like she was covered in burn wounds.    
  
Matsuda touched her wrist like he was afraid he might break it off. He really was so annoying. Even sick like this she still had the ability to seriously harm him. She didn’t. She wondered why she didn’t.    
  
“Are you sure you don’t mind getting undressed like that?” Matsuda asked. It was out of character for him to suddenly become so shy. 

“Why would I care? Because you’re watching me? I’m sure that spider in the corner of the room is watching me as well, should I be concerned about him?”    
  
“What are you saying…? Other people are just bugs to you?”   
  
“I’m saying you’re small. Your entire existence. Small.” 

“Yeah, well at least I’m not fucking short. Haha. Short people. They’re like regular people but smaller. Sucks to be them. See if I ever help you get a book off of a tall bookshelf, fucking shortie.”    
  
“You are all legs, if I were to cut both of your legs clean off, we would be at almost the same height.”    
  
“Yeah, just casually talk about ripping my legs off. That’s going to make you lots of friends.”    
  
“What do you know about making friends? You don’t have any.” Nanami found their conversations distracting at least. Everything in the end is just a distraction from the pain, that’s what it meant living while sick. “If you would just let me bathe on my own, I wouldn’t have to make such a shameful display.” 

“You’re the kind of idiot that would drown in a few centimeters of water, I’m not taking that chance.”    
  
“Then bathe with me.”    
  
“I… what?”    
  
Nanami put her hand in front of her face. She almost wished she had a fan to hide her expression behind to make herself appear more coquetteish. This was of course one of the many masks she wore, humans wore masks to make themselves look like monsters, but monsters wear masks to look like humans.    
  
Her act was imperfect though, her smile just never looked quite right.    
  
“That’s right, you’re an awful pervert who consorts with his patients…” Nanami put three fingers over her mouth, sucking on them. “Should I be concerned?”    
  
“Fuck no. I know I’m a huge dick, but I’m capable of thinking with something besides my dick and…” 

Nanami suddenly grabbed Matsuda by the tie and yanked him down. His body spilled over hers. The only thing that stopped him from falling directly on top of her was his hand catching flat against the bedspread at the last moment. 

  
She was just showing Matsuda what he really wanted. Someone helpless underneath him. It hurts. It hurts so much. The person who’s looking down on me… was Matsuda. Sweat dripped off his brow and fell onto hers, they were that close. 

Matsuda always has a look in his eyes like he’s about to cry. He doesn’t seem to notice, but Nanami sees it. She should be the one crying. She should be but she won’t, because her lacrimal glands are dysfunctional like the rest of her body.    
  
“This is what you wanted isn’t it?”    
  
“Oh fuck you with your smug, I know you better than you know yourself. You don’t know shit.”    
  
“Does it feel good to sympathize with a monster?” Let me tell you the story of beauty and the beast. A selfish girl was transformed against her will into a monster. When she was wounded, a young man sympathized with her despite her ugliness and she fell in love with him. This wasn’t that story. “Should I tell you about the person you’re trying to help.”    
  
“And this is the part where you convince me you’re such a bad person you’re not worth helping.”    
  
“Life means nothing to me, so I can kill like it’s no big deal. It’s no different than plucking weeds. You have to pull a few out so flowers can grow.” 

  
Nanami reached to caress his cheek. She brushed her thumb underneath her eye. Even that small touch was too much for her, it was unbearably filthy. “Of course I consider myself one of those weeds. Hey, how do you think Tsumugi was able to slaughter the Kurokami family? You don’t think she did it herself, do you?”    
  
“What…?” Matsuda’s sassy retort died in his throat. 

  
In this story beauty fell in love with a beast.   
He saw that the beast was a monster.   
The beast was terribly afraid of harming him.   
So he said, don’t worry.   
I’ll become a beast myself.    
  
“They were going to die anyway. Yes, they were going to die, and I was going to die until you saved me but you…”   
  
“I don’t give a fuck.”   
“You don’t care about any of that do you?”   
  
She grabbed his wrist and put his hand on her chest, slowly inched his fingers towards her throat. 

“You were always like this, before you became a doctor, before Enoshima Junko. Your mother was like this as well, wasn’t she? Tell me, when you cut into another person’s flesh with a scalpel do you even feel the smallest flinch of empathy?”   
  
“Yep, I enjoy cutting people up for fun that’s me.”    
  
“Have you ever considered it wasn’t Enoshima’s fault?”   
  
“Everything is her fault.”    
  
“That it wasn’t circumstances that drove you to do what you did.”    
  
“It was also my own stupid fucking choices.”    
  
“You did those things because that’s who you are. You hear voices. I see you staring into the distance and murmuring to yourself. You look at me, and for a few seconds it’s like you don’t recognize me, like you’re looking at someone else.”   
  
“Shut up.”    
  
“You were broken long before you met Enoshima.”   
  
“It’s that bitch’s fault.”    
  
“Trying to fix other broken people, it distracts you, makes you feel like you’re better than them.”   
  
“What the hell do you know? You’re insane.”    
  
“Yes, I hear the voices of my parents who are no longer alive. Sometimes I see them like ghosts. So do you. You think I don’t know what a person looks like when they’re sick?”    
  
It was easy for you wasn’t it. The first time the scalpel slid into Kamukura’s forehead you didn’t feel shame, you felt satisfaction. It was wonderful wasn’t it? What you noticed wasn’t your guilt, but it was your disturbing lack of guilt. You can do things that no human being should be capable of, justifying yourself all the way.    
  
Nanami’s voice layered over his own thoughts. “What gave you the idea that you could take care of other people? Who even asked you? You haven’t slept in days, you’re starving yourself, you do these things on your own-” 

How presumptuous. 

  
“You think everyone needs help, but it’s only you. No one is as pitiful as you.” 

This is what you really want. His fingers stretching from Nanami’s chest to the edge of her throat. He could feel her heartbeat. She was surprised she actually had one. It was there, faint but persistent. He thought about holding that weak heart in his hands. He thought about making an incision in her chest, so he could reach it.    


It reminded him of the calm way Ryoko’s heart beat, when he had his arms around her, and was slowly crushing her neck. The acceptance in her eyes. She would let him kill her, loving him all the same. He almost wanted to cry. He wanted to break down crying and stop himself. Why didn’t he?    
  
He wasn’t bothered by the fact that Junko killed people. He wasn’t bothered when he started to kill people for her sake. No, what he really hated was. That she didn’t love him. If she had loved him, would he have joined her? Would he have done it all happily? Did he feel that way? He didn’t know.    
  
_ I heard you’re having love troubles. I’ll throw you a bone. All you need to do is take what she loves from her, and she’ll cling to you when you’re all she has left.  _ No, he didn’t want to do that, Kumagawa was his friend. Isn’t this what you wanted? Nanami so helpless and pitiful looking underneath him. That was right, he stole all of Ryoko’s memories away and then made her completely dependent on him. He literally erased anybody else besides him she could care about. 

If he had broken Junko’s legs would she have stayed with him?    
He wanted her to be happy. He wanted to protect her happiness. He told himself that. If that was true, then why did he make everyone miserable around him? Kamukura, Komaeda, Junko, Kumagawa, all of them miserable because they had met him. There was not a single person he helped.    
  
Matsuda violently pushed her away. Even when he heard a small, uncontrollable shriek from Nanami’s mouth he ignored it. “Oh, fuck off with this shit! I tried to help you, I really did!”    
  
“Oh?”    
  
“I listened to the constant stream of crap coming out of your mouth, I’ve been nursing you for days! I didn’t have to. I didn’t even want to.” When he said he didn’t want to, her smile fell, and her whole face flinched like she was in pain. 

“You decided all on your own to take care of me.” Nanami’s eyes looked especially lifeless. “I didn’t ask you to. I would have been fine if you left me to die-”   
  
“Except you did. You did ask me.” He slammed his hand down just because he wanted to make a loud noise and rattle her. “You spend every fucking second of your life begging for sympathy with that stupid sick girl act, you basically told me your whole life story when I don’t even care, and then you get pissed at me for trying to help when you ask for it? Yeah, maybe I want to take care of others, maybe I like it in a sick way, but what the fuck do you even want me to do?”    
  
Nanami said nothing.   
Matsuda sighed inwardly. “Just like I thought, this is a fucking waste of my time.” 

She watched his back as he went, his thin frame shaking, struggling with the weight of it all. She thought she would be a little bit more happy after convincing him to give up on her.    
  
She would be fine with it. That’s what she said. Nanami tried to roll on her side but she just felt her skin getting scraped by thorns. When did she decide she would be fine with it? She had forgotten about it until now.    
  
She only had the faintest recall. A doctor, a quack, she heard his voice tell mother there was no hope. She could hear the sounds of mother’s choked sobs. Then after he left mother raised the pillow and placed it over her head. She tried to breathe but suddenly couldn’t, like her bed was the ocean and she had been forced underneath the surface of the water.   
  
What really surprised her was how much her body kept struggling to live. Mother always told her she was better off dead. You poor child. You pitiful child. If only you died. She wanted to go quietly like falling asleep because at least that would finally make mother happy, but her body violently spasm. Her lungs contracted inside of her desperate for air. She flailed around blindly.    
  
Her fingers grabbed weakly onto the pillow. She tried to fight back, tried to cling onto what little part of life she could. She knew it wasn’t much of a life, but I was your child wasn’t I? You gave birth to me. My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right of course, but it still hurt just a little bit. That’s right, she was used to pain, but the pillow that smothered her face was just a little bit too much for her.    
  
She couldn’t believe how relieved she was when her brother removed the pillow, and the first thing she saw was his face. It was like a blind girl seeing the light for the first time. You act so pathetic. You beg for everyone’s sympathy. Then you hate them when they try to help. She supposed she did.    
  
Her mother tried to smother her with a pillow.    
And Nanami really thought that was gentleness, that was kindness.   
The way Matsuda held her wrist, as he dragged a rag across her body to wipe up her sweat, like he was concerned he might hurt her, like her pain was any of his concern, that was an act of violence. 

 

🦔

  
Piling up colors.    
Repeating lies.   
Unable to stay pure anymore.    
His white jacket stained red with Kamukura’s blood and brian matter.    
Wanting to shine. Wanting wings. Simply wanting. Drowning without realizing it.    
  
Matsuda stretched his fingers out as far as he could. As if he expected a butterfly to land on them. Butterfly. If Matsuda could, he would fly somewhere far away, somewhere he could hide and no would see him cry. He envied butterflies and their wings, and maybe that was why he peeled the wings off of Kamukura, off of Junko, he peeled them off until they were helpless. 

He was no better than a child stabbing needles through insects. He had no more empathy than a little boy dissecting butterflies while they were still alive because he was curious at what point they would die.    
  
Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Goddamnit.   
  
He kicked over a chair. Matsuda realized how useless his action was he was just venting his anger and making more of a mess, then he kicked over anoter chair. 

If he got this worked up over her words than Nanami was right he didn’t have the right to take care of other people. What he wanted to avoid no matter what was being just like that nurse who took their frustration on helpless Komaeda in his bed. He kicked over a box, and kicked the wall. Violence had been done to him, and there was violence inside of him, and no matter how many people he helped it just would not go away.    
  
“Yo, Matsuda-san. You look so cute when you’re drowning in self pity. You’ve really got those angsty pretty boy looks going for you.” 

“Who even asked you?”    
  
“I think it’s time for Emukae-chan’s opinion.”    
  
“I think it’s time for Emukae-chan to shut the fuck up!” 

Emukae put on an offended expression, as she crossed her arms. He knew that she was just faking, but he hated how even her fake crying looked realer than his. “Matsuda-san is so mean, even though all I do is love him-”   
  
“And stab me. Don’t fucking forget the part where you stabbed me.”    
  
“And yet, you’re talking to me like nothing happened between us and it’s completely normal. Who’s the weird one here again?”   
  
“It’s definitely you!” Matsuda said, as his fingers trailed to the fresh stab wound in his side. Emukae had stabbed somewhere where he would bleed a lot but not somewhere fatal. He wanted to tell her to stop flirting.    
  
“Besides, me and Mikan are your only friends.”   
  
“You are not my…”   
  
“Think about it. Who have you spent all your time talking to?”    
  
“Fuck. How did that even happen?” Matsuda gave a look like he was having an existential crisis at the realization.    
  
“You know Matsuda-san…” She looked so much like Kumagawa it was almost painful to look at her. He had to avert her eyes. Away from the pale pink flowers, away from the infected pus-filled wound that she kept scratching. “You should stop moping about Enoshima-san picking Kumagawa-san over you already. I mean, have you tried telling yourself that all of your feelings are just lies, that works for me!”    
  
“I’m kind of sick about talking about that, I was so sure everyone else was fed up with Matsuda-kun’s love life too.”    
  
“Well you’re sitting here kicking yourself over things going wrong with Nanami-san, but you won’t even admit what went wrong in the first place.”    
  
“What do you know about me?”   
  
“Everything, because you’re all I think about. Let’s get married and ditch everybody else here.”   
  
“Pass.”   
  
“Well, just thought I’d offer.” Emukae said with a smile. Who the hell knew if her offer was sincere or not. Certainly not Matsuda, maybe Emukae herself did not even know. “You keep acting like you lost her. She didn’t. She chose someone else over you.”    
  
“Damn okay, let’s just pretend this is a stupid love triangle and she wasn’t trying to end the world or anything.”    
  
“You have such a superiority complex. That’s why you could never be a minus. You think, you assume, between you and Kumagawa-kun, you were the better choice.”    
  
“Well, have you met Kumagawa?”    
  
“You’re not much of a prize yourself. I mean, I think you’re cute, I’m so obsessed with you I’d kill everybody and then myself if you asked me to, the thought that you might one day love me back is the only thing that saves me, but otherwise you’re not that great.”    
  
Matsuda felt like he was slowly losing his mind talking to her, but that’s what a normal conversation with Kumagawa felt like.    
  
“Kumagawa was better than you at the one thing you don’t think you need to be good at. You’re so smart, you’re so talented, you don’t need to bother lowering yourself to communicate with others.” 

That’s where you lost.   
You couldn’t talk to Junko.   
And you lost her. 

Matsuda leaned back in his chair as far as he could, stretching his spinal column to its limit. He gave an exhausted sigh. “What is today, shit on Matsuda day?”    
  
“I thought that was everyday.”   
  
“It damn well should be.” 

Matsuda held his fingers, all ten of them extended in front of his face. His hands looked so small, but those same hands had closed around Ryoko’s neck. He saw red in his hands, between his fingers, as if he was still clinging onto her bright red hair.    
  
“But even if your real feelings come out they might not understand you.”    
  
“Then I guess you have no choice but to kill yourself.” Emukae chirped, as chipper as ever. “And when you die, nobody will even care that you’re dead.”    
  
“The fact that you think you’re helping at all, in any way, seriously disturbs me.”    
  
“Oh, I don’t think I’m helping. I’m not that delusional. I just wanted to laugh at you for a bit.”    
  
“Har de har…” Matsuda tried to laugh along with her. He was bad at it. He was even worse at smiling. In general he was just a miserable guy. It was misery being around him. Matsuda heard of a guy like that once, he wore a black uniform, and had black hair like oil dripping down his face. His shadow smiled back at him again. 

 

  
🦔   
  
  
So you know the story Misery by Steven King, right? I just watched the movie because it was easier and I have a short attention span. 

 An author gets in a car crash on the road, but his biggest fan finds him, and saves him. She takes him far away from everyone else and nurses him back to help. But then it turns out the author killed off her favorite character.    
  
She wasn’t taking care of him because she cared about him, she just wanted something out of him. She demands that he rewrite the series, and when he tries to escape, she breaks his leg with a sledgehammer, and then goes right back to nursing him like she did nothing wrong.    
  
I don’t really understand humans, but I watch movies and play games sometimes to try to understand them. I like games better, there’s always an objective, always a goal. 

Nanami’s goal was to escape. It was like a stealth game, except once Matsuda left there was nobody guarding the hallways. Mikan avoided her because she was afraid of her, she loved Junko but everyone who reminded her even a little bit of Junko she quivered in fear like a child expecting to get hit.    
  
Nanami did not need to make it far. What she wanted to escape was her own body. Her ribs were a cage that her heart pounded against, every heartbeat seemed too much effort for the tired muscle. 

She made it to the shower. She took a second to strip off her kimono because she did not want to get it dirty (weird thing to get particular about, she knew) and folded it up neatly on the sink. Then she turned up the water as cold as it could get. She saw her veins underneath her skin turn an icy blue.    
  
Nanami smiled to herself. She knew it was an inappropriate time to smile. She should have practiced smiling more. She had a mirror in her one room, if only she had practiced smiling in front of it every day then maybe she could learn to smile in a way that was not unnerving.    
  
Then it was like.    
The water she was standing in was oil instead. Someone dropped a match, and her entire body lit up. Her fever got worse. So much worse it felt like her brain had melted, and what was inside her head was just a soup bubbling and boiling. 

Burn. Burns, and smoke pouring into those open wounds. Water searing her flesh. Her whole body seized and she fell on her side. She had hit the floor in the wrong way and her head started to bleed, because that was exactly what she needed more red.    
  
She could only manage to crawl a little bit before her slender limbs gave up on her. Burning. Burning. I’ll become a human torch, and give full reign to suffering. Hell was hell, not because of the fire and brimstone, but because it didn’t end. 

The freezing cold water. Her fever. She had no idea which was going to come first, was she going to freeze to death or burn? She didn’t care which anymore. She just wanted to have one of them take her.    
  
That was all she wanted.   
Did she want that?   
  
“Matsuda.”    
  
No.   
She hated this.    
She had decided to die. That was her choice. When he saved her he took away the one choice she could make. She was a monster. She was a sick girl who pretended that she wasn’t a monster to get others to lower their guard around her, and then the coin flipped and she became a monster.    
  
What if both sides of the coin were real at the same time. On one side she was an ill girl, on the other side she was a monster, but both of them were her. Then, what was the point of everything she had done before this? If she really was going to beg for her life now why had she been living just to die before?    
  
Her hand reached out.   
Stop.    
  
She was not going to start begging just because the pain was too much for her. She thought she was used to the pain. The way Matsuda looked at her like she was some pitiful girl. She hated him, but most of all she hated herself for liking it. 

“Matsuda, help…”    
  
When she saw a white lab coat, she reached out and grabbed onto it expecting it to be him. 

_ Oh he’s going to be so smug about this later.  _   
She didn’t remember asking for his help. She couldn’t say something like that anymore. 

_ Matsuda I wanted to ask you.  _ _   
_ _ If you pick off all the petals until there’s only thorns. Can you possibly call what’s left a flower?  _   
  
Matsuda picked up Nanami’s naked body. This was the second time she had almost died in a week. He was the worst doctor ever. Whatever. The first thing he did was turn the water off, and towel off all the water from her body. The cold water stuck on her would make her worse.    


She was feverish so he deliberated for a moment on whether he should worry about hypothermia, or keeping her body temperature down. With a towel wrapped around her the first thing he noticed was how light she was in his hands. 

  
When he was a little kid he wanted to grow up as fast as he possibly could. He had forgotten why. That’s right, he wanted to grow up so big he would be able to help the people that were important to him. And also, he had been relying too much on this small petite girl up until now.    
  
Maybe he wasn’t trying to take care of her.   
Just himself.   
If he put all of himself into taking care of her that distracted him.    
Then, she had been the one to save him so far.    
He had to stabilize her.    
  
When he got her to bed he dressed her body again. It was like dressing a doll. He hadn’t noticed until now how shapely her body was. She had the proportions of an adult woman, she was just a little shorter. Her limbs were longer, her hips too narrow, it looked like a classic sign of malnourishment all throughout her childhood. Flowers needed to be nurtured and taken care of so they would grow. She had been left to rot.    
  
Matsuda had been ignoring the fact that she was a woman. She wasn’t a child like Junko at least. An arrogant, aloof air, but otherwise mature. Nurturing, like an older sister. A girl who didn’t bore easily. 

He piled up blanket after blanket on top of her. He pulled her thin, frail arm out, and then worked on setting up an IV. Matsuda didn’t mind it at all. What was one more sleepless night? He didn’t really need to have the dream where Junko ate him again.    
  
Even though she wasn’t as important to him as his childhood friend he knew all of his life.   
The time that he spent without her, seemed to stretch on forever.   
He noticed how lonely, and how quiet it seemed.    
  
Nanami didn’t need to be a special person, but she was someone to talk to at least.    
  
Ah.   
  
She was awake now.    
  
“Nanami, I have a favor to ask of you…” 

  
“Hm?”    
  
“Can you forgive me?”

Nanami looked confused, like she had never received an apology before. He was bowing his head, he was lowering herself to her. Why? I’m the one who taunted you. I’m the one who made you give up. I’m the one who ran away. She knew she was in the wrong and yet he was the one apologizing to her.    
  
“I’m the world’s shittiest doctor, but please will you let me take care of you?”    
  
“You really are a fool.” Nanami said, sighing with a wistful look. “Though I suppose I’m just as much of a fool for actually…”    
  
Before she could finish her sentence, Matsuda looked up at her. “That’s not the favor I was going to ask. Nanami, call my name again.”    
  
“I forgot.”   
  
“I don’t believe you.”   
  
“Kamukura.”    
  
“Nope.”   
  
“Kumagawa.”   
  
“Now you’re just being mean to me.” Matsuda whined. “Nanami, hold my hand…”    
  
Nanami did not regret a single thing she said to him. There was no one more pathetic than he was. There was nobody who needed help more. She took his hand, and then pulled him forward towards her.    
  
“Wh..what are you doing? Nanami?”    
  
“Oh, don’t be silly. After all, you didn’t think you could have my forgiveness for free, did you?”    
  
“F-fine. I’ll do whatever you ask. I know just saying this makes me sound like I’m full of shit, but I want to atone however possible.”    
  
Nanami poked a long, spider like finger into the center of his chest. Matsuda thought again that humans couldn’t help but love beautiful things, even when they were dangerous.    
  
“Well, then…”    
  
The touch of her fingers tickled his heart.   
  
“How about I ask you to show me your nude self?” 

 


	60. Piercing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title taken from Piercing by Ryu Murakami.

Pekoyama Peko remembered smiling even while covered in blood. All she could think about was how happy she was that she had finally protected the young master. She must have smiled the wrong way, because at that moment the young master looked terrified of her. 

 

Of course he would be afraid of her.   
She had just killed his parents in front of him.    
  
She didn’t want to look at that thing. That thing. That thing.   
“That thing”.    
It was the mangled corpses of Fuyuhiko’s mother and father in the corner of the room. They had died together. Their mangled limbs wrapped around one another. In death they looked like nothing like the violent parents that Pekoyama knew. They almost looked like a normal mother and father.    
  
Ever since she swung her sword Pekoyama had been frozen. She doesn’t decide for herself, she only does what the young master tells her to do. But now the young master is shouting at her, grabbing her by the shoulders and she doesn’t hear him. If she doesn’t have orders she can’t move.    
  
This is what she is without the young master, a mannequin without any strings attached. A wooden body, too tall, too thin of frame, to ever properly resemble a girl. 

  
Normally Pekoyama is the only puppet in a world of real people, woefully unable to fit in with them. Now, everyone in front of her is a puppet. The young master is there but his face looks like it’s been painted on wood. When he speaks, a different voice comes out because this is not the young master because he would never say those things. He touched her and it felt like polished wood, light, stiff, hollow fingers curling around her shoulder. There’s no warmth in his touch at all. 

 

Everyone moves so stiff. A pale imitation at life. As if… somewhere along the lines the strings got crossed up, got tied into knots and they can’t puppeteer themselves properly. Nothing in this world felt real to her anymore, the blood dripping from her and pooling underneath her feet might as well be pink paint. 

The blood has soaked into her hair, into her uniform, dying the white flower of a girl pink. She needs to get the blood out. The bathom. Someone… someone takes her by the hand and takes her there. Water from the shower head spills over the crown of her head. Her silver hair is freed from her braids and falls everywhere. A girl underneath the water fall. The glistening water hides the curves of her body, disguising her nudity. Dream-like imagery.    
  
She realized she had been bathing with her uniform still on. When Fuyuhiko told her to take it off, she just stared lifelessly back at him unable to move her body. A useless manikin. Her white dress shirt iwas now soaked all the way through, transparent, clinging to her body as she shivered. 

Pekoyama thought she looked pathetic. The young master can never see her like this, an obvious sign of vulnerability. But when she looked up,she saw that the young master was not the one bathing with her, and she felt disappointed.    
She’s so disappointed that he’s not there underneath the waterfall with her.    
  
The master has no need for her when she’s weak. She knows that, but… she still wanted him to comfort her.    
  
A cracked sword can’t give or receive comfort. It’s only thrown out and replaced. 

  
Enoshima Junko, who had been washing the blood from her hair up until now saw her shiver and smiled completely satisfied with the way Pekoyama looked right now.    
  
“Senpai, senpai, senpai.”   
  
None of this is real. She would never kill the young master’s parents, and the young master would never look at her with fear in his eyes.  _ Are you going to kill me too, Peko?  _ She wouldn’t. She would never.    
  
Enoshima Junko is faker than plastic and polyester. She’s pretty but in the way faux-designer brands are pretty, she’s a close enough approximation of the real thing that nobody can tell the difference.   
  
JUnko, suddenly, terrifyingly looks real. The only real person among all the marionettes. She stands there in the middle of a spotlight, on an empty stage. Her skin on her supple body is soft, and both perfect and imperfect. Pekoyama can see every detail of her clothing, down to the black lace of her bra poking out beneath her chest. Pekoyama cannot look directly at her, so frighteningly human, so painfully real.    
  
If Junko is real then all of this is real, then the blood on her hands is real, then she… really killed them. Pekoyama suddenly felt terrible nausea. When was the last time killing had made her feel anything? It was an acquired taste for her. It was food you had to swallow and keep down.    
  
“Enoshima…? Where is… the young master?”    
  
“Young master this, young master that! A beautiful girl, a total drop dead knockout is standing right in front of you, she should be getting all of your attention!”    
  
“My attention is yours please explain what’s happening. What did… what did you make me do?” 

“I mean you were there. You saw it all happen. Unless. You didn’t, did you? Oh my god, that’s so totally wicked messed up in ways I can’t wait to explain to you.” 

“I did… what did I do?”    
  
“God what are you some platinum blonde bimbo swinging a sword around? Oops, my mistake, I didn’t mean to bury it in daddy Kuzuryuu’s neck. Why do you even have that sword? Is it just to look cool? It’s totally to look cool, right?”    
  
“Ensohima… on a good day you don’t make a lot of sense. Can you just tell me what I did?”    
  
“Oh, right, right, right. Cool. Cool. Cool. You don’t remember, because it’s not like you’re the one who does the thing. You don’t hold the sword. Someone else gets to pull all the strings, and pull the trigger for you, and you’re not in any way responsible. You don’t do anything and that’s why you’re so fucking useless.”    
  
“I don’t…”    
  
“But you’ve really screwed the pooch now haven’t you? You’ve shot and murdered the pooch. The pooch is dead, and so is love. The young master was already getting sick and tired of all of your stupid mistakes, do you really think he’ll forgive you for killing his parents?”    
  
Pekoyama wants nothing more than for Fuyuhiko to hold her hand right now, but when she looks to her hand there’s still a sword in it, awash in the blood of the elder Kuzuryuu’s. She moves like the water, fluidly, in one motion grabbing Junko by the neck, and pinning her to the ground.    
  
The edge of the sword rubbed up against the girl’s throat, and it absolutely tickled Junko. She laughed so hard she threatened to cut her throat open right then.    
  
“What’s to forgive!?” Pekoyama cracked at last. A china doll with a cracked face. She wouldn’t be any good after this. The master wouldn’t love her even as a toy. “I haven’t done anything wrong! Nothing! There’s nothing wrong with what I did for Fuyuhiko! I’m the one who cares about him the most! I’m not looking for criticism from someone like you! It was all for Fuyuhiko! I’ll do anything for him. I would kill or die without a second thought.”    
  
Under orders. With a sword in her hand. Behind ice cold glasses and a placid expression.   
For the sake of another. For the sake of the boy she loved.   
She killed.    
  
“I cared about Kuzuryuu-kun, unlike you! You don’t care about anyone, not even your own sister! You just go on living without a care in the world don’t you?! You don’t do a single thing for anyone! You don’t have a single human emotion inside of you! So you shut your goddamn mouth!”    
  
Because it was for somebody else’s sake.   
Without hesitation, without deliberation.    
Without a hint of uncertainty.    
Without even regretting it.   
Without ever feeling shame or reflecting upon her actions.    
She killed.    
  
“If only you hadn’t showed up! Then Fuyuhiko, and Natsumi, and I would all be living happily! If it weren’t for you! We all got along so well! Since elementary school and high school, and even in college! As soon as you appeared we all went to shit!”    
  
Because the young master was crying all alone. Because the young master wouldn’t cry on her shoulder. Because he slapped her when she tried to help. Because the young master didn’t want her pity. Because he didn’t want her. Because if she couldn’t comfort him then there was nothing she could do for him. Because those two parents put a sword in her hand and told her to kill whoever threatened the young master.    
She killed.    
  
“It was all for Fuyuhiko. He’s mine and I’m his! We’re childhood friends! I would kill his own parents for him, and he would even kill you for me!”    
  
Because it was for someone important.   
She would kill anyone. She would kill any number of people.   
Enemy gangers. Students. Even women and children.    
Dozens. Hundreds.   
Herself or anyone else.   
Even the ones who took her in. 

“I’m not wrong! I’m right! That’s why I’ll do it again and again! Even if I could go back in time, I would do the same things over and over again! Fuyuhiko forgives me!”    
  
With no excessive force.    
Clean and precise like cutting meat in the kitchen.    
As easily as taking a breath.   
Like a sword and like a monster.   
She was killed by him.   
No. No. She killed for him. 

“Oh, so you are capable of thinking for yourself. It’s just the things you think are incredibly stupid.” Enoshima grabbed the edge of Pekoyama’s sword, and just bare handedly lifted it up. “If you’d be living happily after high school then why did he dump your ass as soon as high school began? Why’d he do his best to get rid of you before I even entered the picture?” 

“He didn’t… that was just a misunderstanding…” 

“And god no wonder he got rid of you. Clingy, much? Saying ‘I did it for him’ like it resolves you of all responsibility, that’s like soo cringe. To start with Fuyuhiko didn’t ask you to do anything, he said he didn’t want anything from you. It’s just you can’t take a fucking hint.”    
  
“N-no, I know what’s best for my master.”    
  
“If you did this all for his sake, then why is your master fucking miserable right now? God, you’re like one of those stalkers, who constantly sends death threats to the person who they’re stalking and then thinks they’re the only person who can protect them. What exactly have you done for your master? He told you to murder his parents for him? Damn, senpai’s cooler than I thought. He’s cooler than cool, he’s ice cold. No wonder he threw you away that-”    
  
“N-no, he would never. Kuzuryuu-kun would never throw anything away, his sister, his family business, or me…”    
  
“Then, if he didn’t order you to kill him you decided that all on your own. You wanted to do it, didn’t you?”    
  
“Shut up. I’ll kill you.” 

  
Junko moved her fingers along the blade, ripping open her own delicate skin and getting the blade soaked red with her own blood. She looked like she was practically asking for Peko to slice and dice her to pieces.    
  
“Oh there’s nothing that would make me happier than to be killed by my super sexy senpai. I’m sure my fans would love it, the school girl with a sword trope is just killer. This is one of those girl on girl fanservice scenes. Hey, heeeey why aren’t you slicing me to pieces right now? I was so ready to become Junko Sashimi!”   
  
“...”   
  
“It’s because if you kill me it won’t be on anybody else’s orders.”    
  
“...”   
  
“You won’t be a tool anymore. You’ll just be a murderer. Oh, well I guess you’ll be a tool in the sense you have a super lame personality but that’s it.” 

“Like I care. Talk all you want, but the time has come to take responsibility for hurting Fuyuhiko.”

“That’s so mean, senpai. I haven’t done a single thing. I didn’t keep you as a cute poodle to give to my son. I didn’t put a sword in your hand and tell you to kill people. I didn’t constantly push you away even though I was the only good thing in your life. I didn’t do aaaaaany of that. I didn’t even tell you to kill those two stinky adults. All I did was show up after everything already happened, and help you get rid of their corpses out of the kindness of my own heart. Is helping your friends despair? Wow, you class 77 chumps have a really messed up definition of friendship.”   


Junko reached forward.    
She undid the door on Peko’s chest, that Peko thought was locked so tightly.    
She reached into the place Peko thought was only for Fuyuhiko’s hands, and then got all tangled up in red strings. Enoshima pulled on the strings, and Peko’s body obeyed. Her entire body tingled. It responded to enoshima.    
  
Red blood. Red string. Everything was red, and then Pekoyama stopped seeing.    
All she heard was Enoshima’s voice in a whisper.    
  
“When the young master’s sister died you were happy, weren’t you? It’s not like you were a part of that family. You were just that family’s thing. Their pet. You were happy because your owner might finally rely on you, this was your chance, but then he didn’t. He ran off and got revenge all on his own.”   
  
Pekoyama remembered when the young master told her the news. She showed no reaction on her face at all. The young master was crying, but she couldn’t. When she tried to touch him, her hand hurt from how hard he smacked it away. She knew it was her fault. She didn’t understand how the master was feeling.    
  
She went alone into her room.   
She had no idea what face she was making.   
She had forgotten her own face a long time ago.    
When she thought of herself all she could think of was the young master next to her.    
She only wanted to be what he wanted of her.    
When she looked in the mirror she saw she was smiling.    
Her young master had lost someone important to him.   
An irreplacable thing. Killed. Broken. Destroyed. Beyond repair. Beyond all hope. Smashed to pieces. Shattered to bits. Completely mangled. Warped beyond recognition. Stomped all over.    
It was destroyed, and her young master’s heart was destroyed along with it.    
So why was she… smiling?    
  
“You’re not sad that your master killed someone. Someone important to one of your classmates. You’re just butthurt hee didn’t use you to do it.”   


Her skin was tingling in anticipation of his touch. He would hold her again as his sword.    
He had been ordering her again and again to stay away from him, to stop doing things for him. Something terribly sad had happened.   
But she was smiling…   
Because she was a monster. 

“You were smiling as you killed his parents, because this time, this time, this time your master has no choice to rely on you.”   
  
Enoshima’s bloody fingers reached into her mouth. She hooked both of her cheeks and pulled them back into a facsimile of a smile.    
  
“The truth of the matter is your master can go on and keep living without you, but you can’t live without him. The moment you realized that, you were already all alone. That’s why one by one you’ve been killing off any other person your master might rely on. You let your guard down around Natsumi didn’t you, you wanted her to…”    
  
“I never wanted that! I would never want that for him! I want. I just want…All I’ve ever wanted was.”   
  


_ Him.  _   
  
“Well whatever. Just do what you want. Because that’s what you’ve been doing this entire time, just pretending that somebody else was giving you orders in order to excuse yourself. I’m not the one who made you this way. You and I, we’re just two people who have nothing to do with each other. I’m not your despair, I’m not anything to you…”   
  
“Then who was it? Who was it that gave me these feelings? Who… who did this to  me?”    
  
“You already know don’t you. You’ve known from the start that your despair isn’t me.”    
  
“No, no, no…”   
  
“Kuzuryuu-senpai is your despair.”    
  
Pekoyama gave up then. She dropped her sword. She didn’t care anymore. She didn’t need to be happy, she just needed to be with him.   
She killed for him.  
She was killed by him.   
Either way, either result, hope or despair she was all tied up in him.   
  
  
🧸

 

Pekoyama had a piercing headache. It was like a pick being driven into her skull. The way Junko talked to people it was like she was trying to understand them in the quickest and messiest way possible, by cracking open their heads and getting fingers deep in whatever she found inside.    


Everything was spilling out. Pekoyama was remembering things she had long suppressed. Why? Why was she thinking about this now? 

Kirumi and Fuyuhiko were talking behind her. “Pekoyama, you’ll have to stay close to me since apparently I’m your fucking seeing eye dog now.”    
  
“I’ll carry out the mission.” Peko replied automatically.    
  
“The two of us had difficulty working together last time. It’s all my fault. I should have adjusted myself to accommodate your weakness. I hope you’ll forgive me Pekoyama-sama.” Kirumi said behind her black lace gloved hand.    
  
“Yes, ma’am.”   
  
“Umm, you don’t need to call me ma’am you know that right?”    
  
“Yes.”   
  
“So, we’re going to cooperate this time?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“What did I serve you for breakfast when you woke up this morning?”    
  
“Yes.”    
  
“Well. Peko’s fucking broken.” Fuyuhiko grumbled as he pinched her cheek and pulled on it to bring her back to reality.    
  
Kirumi had asked her a question that had pierced her brain and made her stupid. That’s right a moment ago, she said.  _ “Do you consider yourself a killer?”  _ She remembered Junko, because Junko was the last person to ask her that question.    
  
Kirumi seemed to know her the way Junko once knew her.    
Similar, but different.   
Junko knew more about her than she herself knew.   
But it was like Kirumi knew her the way she knew herself.    
It was like Kirumi was standing in her shoes, slowly, ever so slowly stealing her place away from her. 

“Yeah, I deserve to die a horrible grisly death but what the hell are they doing dragging Pekoyama into it? She didn’t ask for any of this. She didn’t want this.”    
  
At the time Pekoyama could not answer because what if she did want to kill all those people? What if she wanted Fuyuhiko’s sister to die? What if she wanted his parents to die? So he would only have her, the same way she only had him.    


But she didn’t even have him, did she?    
Fuyuhiko at the start of high school told her to stop being his sword and be a normal girl for once. They had been in middle schools together all of their lives but Fuyuhiko demanded they attend separate high schools.    
  
You should be a normal girl. You should be living a normal life.    
Fuyuhiko said that, but he wasn’t going to come with her. He was going to sink and drown into the world of the yakuza all alone. All she could see washim abandoning her, like she wasn’t good enough to follow him.    
  
She never asked for a normal life. She would never ask to be found on any other person’s doorstep. She would never trade circumstances with anyone else. Despite the fact that she had no parents, she didn’t consider her life to be tragic in the least.    
  
She just needed a life with him in it. Even if it did end with both of them dead in a ditch somewhere, she wouldn’t regret the fact that she met him. She thought maybe… he might feel the same way. She was happy with him… but, he wasn’t happy with her.    


So he sent her away. Even now he was saying that she wasn’t a murderer, that he was the one who had killed all those people. It was like he wasn’t even looking at her. And it was terribly lonely, because since childhood he had been the only one to look at her.    
  
Fuyuhiko didn’t know what it felt like, because he had other people besides her, or at least he did until she killed them.    
  
“Hey, Peko? What’s wrong? You’re not going to tell me are you? You’re just going to silently resent me while I keep flailing here like a dumbass doing all the wrong things! Whatever. Here’s the plan. Priority one, stay alive. Priority two, kick everybody else’s asses.”    
  
They were locked in a mall with several other killers. However, Fuyuhiko had grown up in the criminal underworld, and he called killers his family so it wasn’t that big of a deal for him. He tapped his finger on his eyepatch as he thought.   
  
“Fuck. Who is everybody else?”   
  
“I have done some preliminary analysis and reconnaissance while the two of you were unconscious. Outside of the ones you’re already familiar with there are two killer killers, and a member of the Zerozaki clan.”    
“Oh damn the Zerozaki? That’s an entire family of fucked up.”    
  
“Umm, no offense but you come from a family of killers as well.”    
  
“That’s different. We’re organized crime. They’re basically disorganized crime. Listen I don’t care how pretty he looks, neither of you fuck with Zerozaki, okay? If he dies his whole family will retaliate. Maybe if the Kuzuryuu’s were in our prime we could handle a war but…”    
  
Pekoyama can only look away in guilt. The heads of the Kuzuryuu had been killed by her, and his aunts and uncles massacred as a part of despair. She always thought no matter where she was as long as she was there with the young master she would be fine, but what if there was nowhere for either of them to go after this?    
  
As long as they were together were such pretty words…   
But they weren’t even together.    
  
“My guess is that the situation will resolve itself when we find the secret serial killer hidden among us. There are four killers that were reported in Towa City before all news from inside the city cut off. Killer Tennis, a vengeance killer. The specimen killer, who kills and then plastinates the corpses into art pieces. Zig-zag, a killer who kills with razor sharp wire. Then finally the challenger, a killer strong enough to beat their opponents to death with their bare fists.”    
  
“How do you know all this shit?” Fuyuhiko asked, cocking his head.   
  
“Ms. Nevermind helpfully informed me of this when I asked her.”   
  
“Yep, that’d do it.” Fuyuhiko thought for a moment. “Wait shit, it was so long ago I forgot but we came across one of those guys already. Killer Tennis wasn’t it? That short guy.”    
  
“It’s not nice to refer to other people as short. Mind your manners.” Kirumi said.   
  
“Fuck off. I finally get to be the taller one for once just let me have this.”    


“He’s the one who killed off an entire branch of the mafia.” Pekoyama said, finally raising her head. “In retaliation for when they killed his family.”    
  
“That’s just a rumor. It was actually a branch of the yakuza.” Kirumi corrected her. “He went on a killing rampage with only his tennis racket and managed to massacre the foot soldiers, but the police caught him before he could finish the yakuza hitman who carried out the orders to kill his family.”    
  
“Hey, how come everybody’s fucking heard of this guy but me?” Fuyuhiko protested. “A serial killer hidden among us it’s gotta be him, right?”    
  
“No… I also don’t know…” Pekoyama suddenly felt a headache coming on again. It was like a corkscrew being turned in her brain, everything was twisting around her. If this was all over the news and both Kirumi and Sonia knew about it, then why couldn’t she remember properly? 

_ Well it’s not like you were there.  _ _   
_ Junko’s voice accused her.   
_ You weren’t holding the sword. You weren’t really the one who killed them, right?  _   
A sense of unreality. A world full of mannequins. There wasn’t one real person among them.    
  
She was just a tool, she didn’t kill anybody, right?   
Kill?   
Did she kill?

“Yeah, I remember the story now.” Pekoyama’s voice was dull, almost robotic. “Kiler Tennis refused to fix his matches, so the yakuza put a hit on his family to silence him. Nobody expected he would snap. It’s true what they say people who have nothing are the strongest. He was caught and imprisoned, and he couldn’t kill the person ultimately responsible.” 

Kirumi tucked her silver hair behind her ears with a delicate finger, revealing her two eyes. “Hm, if none of that had happened he would have been my classmate you know? Hoshi Ryoma. I wonder what he’s doing in this city, he’s been silent so far.”    
  
“Ah, that’s right your classmates are here too? Angie, and who else oh that big guy Gonta. They’re being super fucking helter skelter creepy. But if they’re your classmates we should find them together. I know I’m a fucking prick but I don’t think the world revolves around me.”   
  
“Your memories haven’t been wiped? You remember being part of the 79th class.” Pekoyama asked.    
  
“All I remember is that we were a part of the same class together. Nothing else. Also, I wouldn’t know if my memories have been wiped or not.” Kirumi seemed like she was avoiding the question.    
  
“Oh, speak of the fucking devil!” 

Before Pekoyama could press her Fuyuhiko caught sight of something and ran off ahead without her. Pekoyama had no idea what, because she was blindfolded. Before she ran to catch up she looked to Kirumi.   
  
“If I were normal, would that make the young master happy?” 

Kirumi’s hair fell back over her eye, concealing half of her expression. Pekoyama even blinded as she somehow knew the other girl was smiling. “Oh, you’ve confused something important. You and I aren’t just normal girls who were corrupted and became tools. It’s the other way around, we became tools because we can’t possibly be become anything else.”    
  
If not a tool then.

Then you’re just damaged goods. Just human failure.   
Then you’re just dead.    
  
🧸

  
Pekoyama lifts her blindfold for a second just to check, and she saw two boys had already begun to fight to the death. Takumi Hijirihara and Hoshi Ryoma. Tennis balls hit the walls ricocheting off of them and gaining momentum.    
  
They looked completely harmless until they crashed into Takumi denting his skull. They hit him hard enough to completely knock him off his feet. Gravity was not Takumi’s friend once again, and Takumi plunged face first into the ground.    
  
“Ugggggh, senpai where are you? I need you to pull a tennis racket out of your ass for me.” Takumi whined. He was hit hard, but he didn’t seem to feel any pain at all. He moved his too thin, body around like he was dancing on strings.    
  
Laying on the side of his face, Takumi continued to ramble. “Killer Tennis. A vengeance killer. A killer who targets other murderers, heeeeeey, that’s supposed to be my thing. Being the killer killer is something that me and Shuuji do as a couple if somebody else starts doing it then it loses all the romance.” 

Takumi seemed completely out of touch with reality but that was normal for him. Hoshi Ryoma was holding a tennis racket with spikes on it, before he could bring it down Takumi’s head Pekoyama moved first to block him with her sword.    
  
“He’s just a middle schooler.” She said.    
  
“Scum killing other scum is just one thing, but that idiot was just a normal kid. He doesn’t deserve to rot in the filth like us so just leave him.” Fuyuhiko joined her.    
  
“Oh, so you’ve never killed a middle schooler before.” Ryoma wore a leather jacket and a hat pulled over her face covering most of his expression. He had a cigarette in his lips that quickly fell apart into ashes as he inhaled the last of it. “You’ve never killed a classmate, or someone’s wife who had nothing to do with it. You’ve never killed anyone you’ve had to feel guilty. Everyone you ever killed deserved to die because they were criminals like you is that right?”

Ryoma stared at out from the shadows his eyes were hiding under. “You’re a killer, but you’ve got principles. You’re a good guy about it. You make me laugh. That’s not cool at all man.”   
  
“What the shit are you talking about? You don’t even know me!”    
  
“That’s right you can kill people you don’t even know like it’s nothing.” Ryoma looked on the brink of insanity, and he also showed no emotion at all in his eyes. It was a rare combination that Fuyuhiko had only seen once before in Hinata, when he was drifting away from him and becoming more like Kamukura. 

Ryoma started to win their stalemate.    
Pekoyama had no idea where his strength was coming from.    
  
“You can really keep holding that sword like you don’t feel a single bit of remorse for anyone you’ve killed, huh?”    
  
The corkscrew turned further, drilling another hole in her brain. The memories suddenly came leaking out. She was no longer there, she was back in hope’s peak in an abandoned stairwell. A few steps above her sat Ikusaba Mukuro, her kouhai and the only real friend she had made since coming to this school. 

Mukuro’s legs were cut up. She looked to be in tatters. She had been walking around like this until Pekoyama ordered her to sit down, and let her treat her injuries. “Ikusaba-kun. If someone tries to kill you, you have to fight back. This, this is…”   
  
Too much.    
Mukuro was covered in all kinds of injuries. The untouchable girl who had never been wounded once in combat was gone. The untouchable shadow, someone even Pekoyama herself was not strong enough to defeat had vanished. All that was left of Ikusaba was the broken girl Pekoyama saw in front of her.   
  
Despite the fact that she was obviously in pain, Mukuro was doing her best to smile at her.    
  
Pekoyama could not help but wonder if this was just how Mukuro had been all along. No matter how many times Enoshima smacked her around, no matter how much she was kicked, she would keep smiling and bearing it.    
  
Now that just applied to other people. She would let others beat on her because she thought she deserved it, punishment for all of the people she had killed.    
  
“It’s fine. I can’t be a normal girl if the only way I know how to resolve things is by killing people.”    
  
“You can’t be a normal girl either way.”   
  
“Huh, why?”   
  
“Because you’re a weirdo.” Mukuro looked like a kicked puppy. As Pekoyama wrapped bandages around her lower leg, she wondered how anybody could ever want to hurt such a girl. “You’re a cold and heartless killer one moment, and the next moment you’re just an awkward dork. It’s like there are two different girls in front of me and I have no idea which one is the real one.”    
  
Pekoyama was just musing. She was wondering if she was even talking about Ikusaba.    
  
“Junko-chan tried to convince me I wasn’t real once. That I was her imaginary friend and nobody else but her could see me.”    
  
“You’re just hurting yourself.” Pekoyama said as she finished wrapping the bandages. “If you want to protect something lying down and taking it all won’t do anything. You’ll just die, do you understand?”

“Why does protecting have to mean taking from others?” Ikusaba said. She was always such a sensitive girl. Pekoyama had no idea why Junko thought her sister would make a good killer. Pekoyama did not even want to imagine how much this girl had to be beaten until she became insensitive and dull to the pain of other people. “Makoto is important to me, but you know he has a sister who’s just as important to him. If he were to lose her it would hurt him. The same way it would hurt me if I lost my sister. And… everybody has someone like that.”    
  
Mukuro raised her fingers as if grasping at invisible threads connecting everyone. She could see them just like her sister did.    
  
“I don’t want to think about losing Makoto. Just imagining it makes me want to die. So, it must feel that way when somebody else loses someone? I can’t take back the pain I’ve already inflicted, but I never want to hurt anyone in that way again.”    
  
“So it’s better if you suffer?”    
  
“You don’t know what it’s like, Pekoyama! You were alone from the start. You don’t have a family.”  Pekoyama felt like she had misspoken. She had stepped on Mukuro’s pride as a big sister. “You’ve never really lost anybody because you were always alone except for Fuyuhiko. Maybe that’s why you didn’t understand what he was going through when he lost his sister. But you know, he took someone’s sister away from them too. He’s probably killed a lot of people’s family members.”    
  
“Ikusaba-kun, what was he supposed to do? You don’t live in our world. It’s kill or be killed.”    
  
Why was she…?   
Why was she talking down to Ikusaba in order to justify herself.    
  
“I’m sorry I just… Pekoyama-senpai imagine how you became when you lost him. You were just like a bag of bones. It’s like you had nothing left. I just want you to understand that you might make someone else feel that way the next time you pick up your sword.”    
  
Ikusaba Mukuro really was a despair sister. Pekoyama always felt helpless when she was with one of those sisters. Helplessly inferior. If she had to consider other people’s feelings she would never even be able to pick up a sword. It would be too heavy. She wasn’t even able to carry her own feelings.    
  
Her own heart was too heavy for her, that was why she allowed it to fall out and roll away. How was she supposed to understand others? She couldn’t even understand the feelings of the person she loved the most, even after they spent all that time together.    
  
Ryoma’s words dragged her back to reality.    
  
“My entire family taken out by one yakuza hitman. She killed with no hesitation, cut through them all, like the living embodiment of a sword.”    
  
“W-what are you talking about?”    
  
“You really don’t remember?”    
  
Piercing.   
Through her skull.    
They kept repeating the same story over and over again. Like if you repeat a lie enough times it will replace the truth.    
  
She started to remember. The memories didn’t feel like they were hers. They felt like a movie playing in her head. Junko’s voice repeated again for her.  _ You’re not really the one who killed them are you? You’re not there. You’re not holding the sword. Hey, hey, hey, where are you senpai? You’re just a bullet leaving the barrel. You’re the edge of a knife. _   
  
I… I…    
Did… I… Kill?    
Did I kill and then forget about it?    
  
“I guess killing really is nothing to you. Do it then, go ahead.” 

Peko suddenly remembered. A familiar scene. Ryoma underneath her begging her to kill him. She coldly responded.  _ I won’t kill you. I only kill those the young master tells me to.  _ Please kill me. You can’t just leave without killing me.  _ I don’t exist outside the young master’s orders. I have absolutely nothing to do with you.  _ She said it like an excuse.    
  
The katana suddenly became too heavy for her to carry and slid out of her fingers.    
His tennis racket smashed into the side of her skull, and she fell limp to the ground.    
  
“To be honest. I’ve been hiding this entire time scared you’d recognize me and come to finish the job. But then, I thought I’d come and fight you and get it over with already. But I’ve changed my mind.” 

Pekoyama didn’t say anything. She was trying to comprehend the mindless pain if her flesh being ripped open. It was like she was hit with a bat covered in barbed wire. Stretches of skin on her forehead were missing like they had been ripped clear off, and all she could do was keep her eyes shut and try not to scream.  Don't scream for help. Even if you cry. The young master won't comfort you.  

Mukuro told her. Fuyuhiko lost his only real family when his sister died,  but her and Fuyuhiko had cut so many families apart already.

Just like Fuyuhiko back then,  Ryoma was just grieving a dead family member.  But this time Peko and Fuyuhiko hadn't been taken from.  They were the takers. Peko had said it was right for Fuyuhiko to kill for his sister, but didn't that mean it was right for her head to be pierced like this.   
  
She still didn't really know if she was the one who had killed Ryoma's family or not, but what was really wrong was that she could have killed him. She could have killed everyone important to him and then completely forgotten about it because she was just acting under orders. She had forgotten to count how many she had taken out like that. She no longer remembered their faces, they were no more real than broken mannequins to her. 

_ I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. _ _   
_ _ Someone tell me what to do.  _

"I don't want to be killed by someone like you."   
  
Failure to love or be loved.   
Failure to kill or be killed.   
In other words, just a plain failure. 

 


	61. Confessions

Fuyuhiko’s right eye itched. 

The source of the itch was most likely the burn from when his father put his cigarette out directly onto his eye. Which was the trigger for Peko to kill mom and pops. He had barked orders for the grunts to get rid of the bodies and announced this was a coup and anyone who wanted to rague with him could kill him or fuck off, but that was all just a smokescreen.   
  
Everything he did was just posturing. He spent so much time pretending to be someone else, the son of the Kuzuryuus, the older brother of Natsumi, the ultimate Yakuza, that he no longer knew who he was anymore.   
  
Who was he at this moment? Who did he need to be protect Peko? When the blood was still fresh on the ground and Peko pointed her sword at him, he said _Are you going to kill me too?_ He regretted it. She had done it all for him. They were her parents too. The family that took her in. The ones that fed her and clothed her. She did it to protect him, but as always he could only think of himself.   
  
He looked at her with fear in his eyes, like she was some kind of monster.   
Here now was an image.   
A scene he left behind somewhere.   
A nostalgic view.   
Someone who had been all too close to him for some time. Someone who he had forgotten all along the way. A childhood memory.   
When they were kids they got kidnapped together.   
Peko held his hand the whole time.   
When they took his blindfold off the first thing he saw was Peko.   
She tried to smile at him.   
A gentle, and somewhat sad smile.   
He was scared.   
Scared of Peko.   
The girl that said.   
She liked him.   
He cried and ran away.   
Even though Peko must have been hurt too.   
Even though she must have been just as scared.   
Terrible.   
Detestable.   
Coward.   
Peko stopped smiling after that.   
It was all his fault.   
Peko stopped smiling, and Fuyuhiko swore he would never cry.   
So why was he. 

  
  
He scratched at the corner of his eye. His nail was dirty and irritated the eye, and no matter how much he scratched the bothersome itch would not go away. The ash from his father’s cigarette mixed in with the burns, causing his eyes to water. Everything irritated him. Everything was smoke in his wounds.

 

The phone was ringing behind him. He knew it was one of his uncles. Patricide wasn’t taken upon kindly in the family. When the grunts found them Fuyuhiko screamed that he was the killer. Well even if Peko did it, if he was the one who gave the orders then he would still be the killer after all she was just a…  
  
I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick.   
Vomit crawled up his throat, and then when he swallowed it, it went down the wrong tube. He could feel it in his lungs. He clutched his chest. He was nausea. He had inhaled too much smoke, he could feel it burning up the inside of his esophagus.   
  
His parents were asleep. Sleeping, just like his sister. _Come join us, Fuyuhiko._ I can’t do that don’t be fucking dumb. _You’re such a piece of shit big brother._ Yeah I know.   
  
The phone kept goddamn ringing. His uncle would demand an explanation soon. Was he going to kill his father's brother? His wife? His cousins? Kill them all. Massacre them. Slaughter every last one of them. End it all in an old fashion shootout like one from the movies. He was a boy pretending to be a gangster. He was pretending to be a big brother. He was pretending to be good student at school. He pretended to make friends and get along with others. Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko was built from the expectations of everyone around him. _Don’t disappoint me this time, brat._ I won’t dad.   
  
The insides of his eyes were burning. He didn’t know what to do. Sniveling piece of shit kid. He couldn’t even give a single order to everyone relying on him. Because the person they believed in. The person they loved. Wasn’t really there. Even Peko, she didn’t know how aful he really was. He tried to breathe to calm himself down but there was too much smoke in the air. This was agony. Agony. Agony. He was really going to collapse here.   
  
What was two more people dead compared to all of the people he had killed so far?   
He was used to people dying.   
He was even used to people close to me dying.   
Death was something that was close to me.   
She wore a black skirt, and had dazzling white hair. She had the prettiest red eyes like jewels.   
And still, this was agonizing. It hurt. It hurt too much. It was excruciating. It was like something was goring at his flesh, tearing out chunks of his skin. He would probably never be able to forget this. To forget the death of the Kuzuryuus, the bodies huddled together in death were going to be sunk into a lake somewhere but they had already been burned onto the retina of his right eye. Even if he scratched and scratched until his eye was completely destroyed he would not forget it. Remembering Pekoyama’s smile made this all the more terrible. 

The phone was ringing. Bells were ringing. Calling out to him.   
  
“Somebody shut that fucking phone up.”   
  
Enoshima lifted it, “Sorry the Yakuza’s under new management. Redirect all calls from now on to up your mom’s butthole.” Then dropped the phone off the hook.   
  
“Enoshima, what do you think you’re doing!?”   
  
She was sitting in the same desk his father once sat at. She leaned back in the chair and kicked her feet up on the desk. She had a pinstripe hat tipped over one of her eyes, and was chewing on an unlit cigar. 

“No, no, no, I’m no longer a Gyaru. Stop looking at me with such lust in your eyes. Right now I’m playing an artifact from olden times. I’m Enoshima the Gangster. I’m a good-for-nothing.”   
  
She had her hand bandaged up. That must mean Pekoyama got rough with her. Fuyuhiko needed to warn her not to, Junko was their ticket out. Fuyuhiko already knew there would be a price to pay for relying on Junko to this extent, but as long as he was the only one paying it, it was fine. He was already in hell. He had been born there. What did it matter to him if he sunk a bit deeper. Hell, fucking, fire and brimstone clogging up his lungs, and the cigars his dad always smoke stunk something awful and irritated him so much.   
  
He started smoking to imitate his father. He wanted to smell like him. When he grew up he was never going to scream like him, or threaten to kill mom. He was going to have a quiet household far away from the Yakuza. His wife and kids could live in the light. They wouldn’t have to become part of the Yakuza just because they were born into this world. 

“Did you take care of Peko?”   
  
“Damn, you put a hit out on your own girlfriend? Is that how you two flirt? You’ve really got that Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing going on, don’t you? Is she even your girlfriend? Man, I’m like the smartest gyaru girl and I can’t even figure that out, what’s the deal with you too.”    
  
“Don’t fuck with me, Enoshima.”   
  
“Oh, but that’s my favorite thing to do. Let’s not though, I wouldn’t want PekoPeko-san to get jealous.”    
  
His face reddened visibly and he couldn’t tell if it was anger or some other emotion.   
He just needed to keep Enoshima on a leash. Use her and throw out if she becomes a liability, that was the Yakuza way. 

“I’m not the one you need to keep on a leash.”

Junko said, as if reading his mind. She suddenly walked around the desk. She was right in front of him. She had him over the desk. She lit the cigar in her hand, and exhaled smoke into his mouth. Fuyuhiko just let her, he barely resisted.   
  
“What the fuck are you planning?”   
  
“Me, I’m not planning anything. I’m an innocent blonde girl who’s been kidnapped by a dangerous Yakuza. I’m trembling in my designer boots right now. P-please, please don’t hurt me Senpai, I’m begging you. I’ll do whatever you want.”   
  
“What do you mean keep her on a leash.”   
  
“Oh, I mean you’ve done a pretty good job with Pekoyama-san so far. She’s well trained-” 

Fuyuhiko grabbed his father’s ash tray and broke it over her head. Junko immediately backed off giving him space. Despite the fact that she was bleeding, all she did was rub her head. “Owie, owie, owie. Yakuza are so violent.”   
  
“Never say her name again. Don’t even think it, you have no right. Peko’s mine.” 

“What does she get out of this relationship exactly? If she’s a good little girl she can keep killing people for the yakuza her whole life. Oh, she ges you I guess.”  
  
“She’s yours, huh?” Enoshima Junko tilted her head slightly. Her lips were slightly apart, and he could see her tongue licking the roof of her mouth, and the back of her teeth. “You see this is what I did with Mukuro. Be the only person in their life who loves them. Then, when you’re their only one cut off all affection entirely. They’ll do anything to earn that love back.” 

“What are you saying-”  
  
“I’m giving advice like you asked me too. You see, you already have a place in the world Kuzuryuu-senpai. You have a family. Her place is by your side. All you have to do is make her fight to keep that spot.”   
  
“Hey, I’m not the one who fucking decided any of that. My parents did all that shit to her.” 

Enoshima picked up the gun from his father’s desk, a black revolver. She emptied out the bullets onto the floor, and started to play around with it like it was a toy. 

“They gave her to you as a pet. She’s loyal to you no matter what, living for your sake, always thinking about happiness. Do you think she’s that way by choice? If she ever spoke out of turn she was probably beaten, if she thought for herself she was punished.”  
  
“No we were… ever since we were kids we were always…”   
  
“You were with her. So you of all people should have known how they treated her. But you let it happen. You were so fucking flattered by her love for you that you didn’t think about it.”

Fuyuhiko remembered. Whenever he made a mistake he would tell Fuyuhiko to sit down. He drew out a knife and then discreetly cut a small part of Pekoyama's body.   
  
This was Fuyuhiko's punishment. The punishment for his mistakes. If you make a mistake as the leader, it's everyone underneath you who will suffer boy. Even as she was cut she did not cry. She ekpt her head bowed low the entire time. One time his father lost patience, grabbed her by the silver hair and dragged her head down forcing her to bow. Then, he cut her pretty hair off in front of Fuyuhiko.    
  
If you make mistakes she'll be the one to suffer. It's her life that pays the penalty. Pekoyama still wasn’t crying. Fuyuhiko was. No, he begged. He told his father to stop. She’s mine you can’t take her away from me. Pekoyama was bandaged up. Her silver hair was short now. Pekoyama never wore it down again after that day, like she was scared his father would grab it again. Every time he reached to touch her hair she flinched. 

Fuyuhiko grew up without a single scar on his body. That’s because when he screwed up, his parents marked Pekoyama for his mistakes instead. All down her back, her arms, Fuyuhiko asked once when they were bathing together and Pekoyama just shut up. Ever since that day she never let him see her scars again. She demanded her own room, and her own bed to sleep in. She always had her guard up around him. 

“I told her she wasn’t my hitman any more. I wanted her to live a normal life  without me.”  
  
“Oh, because leaving the yakuza is so easy. She has a criminal record, no family outside of yours, and also no money or resources. If you were actually serious (lol) about letting her leave you would have gotten her out of the country and far away from your parents.”   
  
He thought about it once. Cut her off entirely. Send her somewhere where she could start a new life. He was born into this life but Peko was made this way by his parents. If she had never met him, she would be living a normal life, with a normal amount of happiness, without having to kill anyone. 

But then he realized.  
There was only one person who didn’t expect anything out of him. One person who accepted him exactly as he was. If he sent her away, who would he be?   
  
She saw him for the weak child he was.   
She still wanted him, that made him happy.   
She coddled him, that annoyed him.   
She protected him, that made him ashamed.   
  
“You were just playing childish attention games. Oooh, Peko it’s n-not like I like you or anything, baka. You’ve used that to keep her on a short leash all this time, just like me and Muku-chan-”   
  
“I’m not fucking… you. Okay?”   
  
“Well obviously not, I’m way out of my league. I don't go for the bad boy type actually. I've been alone my entire life. If only there was one person out there who understood me, then maybe I wouldn't have turned out this way. Oh my god, wouldn't it be hilarious if I was like that???"  

“Don’t even compare us! Like you know a damned thing! I know everything about Peko. I was always by her side. She’s nothing like your Mukuro. She’s mine, see. Mine, mine, mine. I love her. Don’t compare us. You just hate your sister. You can’t stand the sight of her. What do you know, you’ve never loved anyone but yourself?”   
  
“You think I don’t know how horrible I am to her? You think I don’t love her… is that what you think?” Enoshima Junko’s eyes seemed to swell up with something. That girl could fake cry on a dime if she wanted to. Fuyuhiko thought he might have seen the first genuine emotion cross Junko’s face. It was weak, and faint, like a fireflies light, and then it was gone. “She’s my sister…”   
  
Fuyuhiko and Peko used to catch fireflies together. He forgot to poke holes in the lid of the jar, and all of the fireflies suffocated. The next day he found the dead insects lining the bottom of the jar. 

“She’s yours, didn’t you say that? Didn’t you call her _mine_ like it was an expression of love.”   
  
Junko’s words pierced through him. 

“Pekoyama-senpai can’t do anything without orders. She can’t live for herself. But who’s the one who made her that way? Who’s the one who was by her side all this time. Who? Who? Who?”  
  
“Don’t just sit there and act like you had nothing to do with this. Pekoyama’s gone fucking nuts. You’re insane. You’re broken. You’re not even human. Everything around you gets destroyed.”

  
Fuyuhiko grabbed the gun that Junko was playing with out of her hand forecefully and touched it to her forehead. She just raised her hands and kept playing innocent.   
  
“Oh you flatter me. I see myself as a wonderful mix of slutty, suicidal, and sexy but you, you’re making me out to be some agent of chaos. I love that. It’s a good look on me.”   
  
Junko giggled girlishly. 

“I’m tickled pink. I’m so pink, pink, pink, it’s my favorite color you know? Do you want to know my secret? No matter what happens, just show up at the end and laugh, and they’ll assume you’re in control of everything.”   
  
“It’s not fucking funny.” 

“Why are you looking at me like I’m the bad guy? Oh I get it, you can’t help but stare at my boobs right? That’s okay, I want you to look at them. The one who drove Mahiru to despair. The one who killed her only support over a petty fucking grudge was you. You’re the fucking yakuza. Did you really think you could get chummy with everyone? Did you think you could have a love comedy with Pekoyama-senpai? You don’t need my smarts to be able to see this coming.”

He should have known. He should have seen this coming. Pekoyama was next to him all this time, but he was looking away. It was like Enoshima said, like he was the one who had made her that way. He thought he was the only one who saw her as a girl. He used her, just like everybody else did. 

His eye was still itching. He was going to cry. He couldn’t even keep one promise to her. Fuyuhiko noticed the shine of a silver letter opener on his father’s desk. The glare of the light blinded him for a oment. Then, he picked it up and jammed it into his right eye. He cut the damaged eye out, punishment for being blind all this time.   
  
“Just for the record I didn’t do that either. I think you look really cool that way senpai.”   
  
Junko grabbed him by both sides of the face, and pulled him close to her. All he could smell was smoke. Smoke, ash, and hellfire. She kissed him right over his damaged eye. She got his blood on her lips. She looked like she liked the taste of him. 

At that moment she saw the silhouette of Pekoyama behind them. She had just stumbled in and interrupted them. Words could not describe the look of hurt in her eyes. Fuyuhiko pushed Junko away and went after Peko.   
  
When he found her again her head was turned facing away from him. He wanted more than anything for her to look his way again. “Did Enoshima tell you to…” When she avoided his gaze and tried to step away, he took a step after her and grabbed her arm.  

“Hey, I want to know. Is she trying to turn you against me?”   
  
Why did he sound… so forceful? 

The voice that was coming out wasn’t his. It was smoky and rough just like his father’s. He looked and saw he was holding a cigar in his hand.   
  
“I decided to do that on my own.”   
  
She tried to shake his hand off of her shoulder. He lost patience and slammed her against a wall. Pekoyama was much stronger than him, but she would never raise a hand in front of him. She looked every bit the frail girl, one who could burn up in sunlight. He grabbed her wrist, and held onto her tightly enough to leave burn marks on her flesh.   
  
“Well it was a stupid fucking decision. Did you even think before you did any of that? I told you not to listen to Enoshima. She’s trying to turn us against each other don’t you get it? Who do you take orders from, her or me?”   
  
“I didn’t listen to anything Enoshima said. I never spoke with her when you weren’t around-”   
  
“You can’t even think up a good lie, can you?” He grabbed her hair in the exact same forceful manner that his father did, to stop her from squirming away. “Or do you think I’m stupid enough to believe me.”   
  
“Y-you’re hurting me!”   
  
“I’m trying to protect you Peko. But you never let me, because you don’t think I can.”   
  
“Let go!”   
  
“Why am I not good enough? You have everything you need with me. Everything. What more could you possibly want? You have a nice house, food, clothes on your back. I'm just trying to give you everything... I'd make an enemy of the entire family to protect you... so why are you looking down on me even now.”   
  
“Looking… down. You think I’m looking down on you?”   
  
“You have a better word for it! I tell you to stay away from me, you follow me around. I tell you not to talk to Enoshima, you keep fucking talking to her. I order you not to kill anybody anymore, and you kill my parents. You keep saying you’re my tool but you don’t listen to a single fucking thing I say."

“No… young master… I…”

“I’ve told you a thousand fucking times not to call me that. Who do you think you are? You’re just some orphan my parents took in! I bet all that time we spent together meant nothing to you, didn’t it? If you didn’t like me you should have just said something. It’s not that hard.”   
  
Fuyuhiko threw his arms out in a rage.   
His entirety, all of him was hostile to her.   
He just wanted her to go away.   
And Pekoyama gently wrapped her hands around his wrist.   
She got closer to him than he had ever allowed anybody else to be.   
She rested her head against his collarbone.   
She began to cry into his suit.   
Peko never cried, even when she was punished because of him.   
No matter what his dad did to her he never cried.   
  
“N-no… That’s not it.” She stopped for a moment and then noticed the blood running down the side of his face. Even though he had been manhandling her the whole time, she gasped as she realized he must be in pain. She touched the side of his face, as if trying to calm a beast. “Young master… y-your eye.”   
  
“You just pitied me all this time didn’t you. You felt so fucking sorry for me.” Fuyuhiko touched the hands she was using to cling to him. For a moment, it looked like he was going to put his arms around her. Instead, he brushed her hair back with the same hand he was holding the cigar in, so the smoke would get in her eyes. He grabbed her wrist again and twisted it the wrong way, so it would hurt. “If you’re going to use your freedom to mock and insult and look down on me, then you’re better off as my tool.”   
  
His eyes were spinning, black and white.   
His whole world was spinning around her.   
  
He let go and she ran away. Hey. Who said all those things? Who was it that made Peko cry? Was it dad? No, dad was dead. Who had gotten violent with Peko just now. He’d never forgive them.   
  
Enoshima Junko leaned against the wall. She stole the cigar from his hand, and took another puff.   
  
“You could just sit down and talk to her like a rational human being. Boom. Problem solved.”   
  
Fuyuhiko ignored Junko’s suggestion.   
She finger gunned him.   
Bang.

“But you’re so damn focused on appearances you can’t even swallow your pride for two seconds.”   
  
This was a stage of her own creation. No matter how this plays out, they were not going to get a happy ending. 

“Oh, and Kuzuryuu-senpai. I’d try to be less stick and more carrot with her this time. Oh, I guess if we’re talking about you, the carrot is a metaphor for your dick.”  
  
Fuyuhiko could not do anything, just nod.   
The two of them leaned against the wall in a room full of smoke.   
  
“She loves you, but all it does is irritate you. Because what you feel towards her isn’t love. It’s a sense of entitlement. A desire to own her. Her feelings just get in the way of that.”   
  
“She’s mine, I won’t let anybody have her.”   
  
Kuzuryuu finally said, zombie-like, he had gotten dizzy, nauseous, worn out and fatigued by vertigo by how much his eye was spinning right now.   
  
“You can’t let go of her after all, because Pekoyama-senpai is your despair.”   
  
If love was just despair, then he would fall deeper and deeper.   
Sorry mom, dad.   
Sorry sister.   
Sorry Peko.   
I couldn’t save any of you. I wasn’t good enough for any of you. 

 

🧸

 

“Stop.”  
  
Fuyuhiko’s voice was like a child’s as he saw Peko fall to the ground in front of him clutching her hair. It was like that time back then she was punished for his mistakes.   
  
“Stop hurting Peko.” 

Hoshi dropped his tennis racket. He dug his hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a lighter, lighting the cigarette still in his mouth. He had striped pants, a chain dangling from his ankle, and he had pulled a dew rag over his buzzed hair cut. He looked like he was wearing a leather jacket over what he wore in prison.

They were both criminals. Fuyuhiko was still free walking the streets because of his family, and Ryoma had been put behind bars. That was the only difference between them. When his own sister was killed, Fuyuhiko stopped at nothing to punish the killer, even when Koizumi begged him.   
  
A real man never made a girl cry. When Koizumi begged and cried in front of him, he slapped her as hard as he could to get her off of him. He screamed at her. He told her if she got in the way he would kill her too.   
  
When she lost Sato, Koizumi acted like she was comatose. She showed up to school, but that was it. She dragged herself around everywhere, she never smiled, she went mute to the whole world. She only started talking again once Enoshima showed up at school a whole year later.   
  
Was he going to end up like that if he lost Peko? 

Violence is who you are. It’s in your blood. It’s how you were raised.   
Do you really think your parents didn’t love you? Do you really think they didn’t love each other? They did it all out of some twisted sense of love. Junko’s words were like smoke blown into his mouth. He inhaled them and his lungs, and all his insides rotted.   
  
“Hey, man I’m not the one who hurt her. You’re the one making her fight your battles for you.”   
  
“What are you saying?”   
  
“What I’m saying is, this time let’s do it your way.”   
  
“My way?” 

“I’m not that pretentious of a guy. I’m not gonna act like what I’m doing now is any better than what you did to me.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, and then threw it away. “I’m a lame guy, beating a girl like that, I’m human scum. See, we agree on something.”  
  
His eyes were round and sleepy. He continued to pull his hat over his forehead. He stretched it and let it snap back into shape.   
  
“I thought I had to get revenge. I thought I was doing it for them. But, what did they care? Corpses don’t give a solitary fuck about what the living do. Once your dead it’s the end. But me, i’ve hit my end and I kept going. Geez, I’m already tired of myself talk about this I can only imagine how you must feel.”   
  
“Who gives a shit what your reason is? I’ll fucking kill you for hurting Peko.”   
  
“Meh.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“No big deal. Not to me, anyway. No matter how much I get tortured or beaten, I don’t feel a thing. You could even kill me if you wanted, go ahead, do whatever.”   
  
“What are you-”   
  
“I’m just telling you, you can’t do anything for her. If you kill me that’s on you man. You just wanted to kill me. You got pissed off and wanted to break something. Revenge. Protecting others. All of those things. They’re things you do for yourself. So let’s settle things the way the Yakuza do, let’s fight it out in the streets like thugs, it’s simpler that way.”   
  
“You’re so fucking full of shit man. I’ll kill you. I’ll end you. I’ll make you eat the fucking curb.”

“Hey, there’s no need to get so worked up man. This is just one person killing another person.”   
  
“You’re right. I’m the one who should have done all the killing, all the taking myself. I should have protected her from that.” Fuyuhiko threw off his own jacket as well and prepared to handle this with his fists.   
  
“Protecting? You’re not doing anything so respectable. You bashed a sixteen year old schoolgirl who couldn’t even defend herself over the head with a hammer, then took pictures of the body to show her friend.”   
  
Ryoma lifted his leather jacket over his head. All that was left was the leather black and white striped shirt he was wearing underneath, clinging to his thin and wiry body.   
  
“She killed my sister!”   
  
“Dang, what a volatile guy. You go from depressed to angry so fast. You’re kind of scary.” Ryoma said, turning around to face Fuyuhiko finally as he stretched out his shoulders.“She was scared the fucking yakuza was going to kill her, because your sister threatened her over and over again. And then they did.”   
  
“I’m fucking strong you know.” Fuyuhiko pulled out his tie, loosened his collar, and then rolled up his sleeves all the way.   
  
“Say that after you’ve defeated a truly strong adult.”   
  
“But I have. You don’t live in my world by being weak.”

“You killed adults that were far scarier and more deranged than me, true. But, someone who even once beats the shit out of a woman or child has no right to talk about strength. The only person you’ve killed with your own hands was a defenseless little schoolgirl, the rest you sent her to do it for you.”  
  
Fuyuhiko closed the distance between them and swung for his head. Ryoma ducked under it, and then rabbit punched him twice in the face. Fuyuhiko felt like he was elastic, the punches just bounced off of him and he barely felt any pain.   
  
The third time and his brain rattled around in his skull. Even though he knew he could take more than that, his legs gave out under him. His brain must have sent the wrong signal from all that bouncing around. He pushed himself up.   
  
He killed someone for revenge.   
He was being killed for revenge.   
  
“I told you don’t talk about her. Everything you fucking say pisses me off.” Fuyuhiko said, punching his fist into the ground.   
  
“That’s pretty rude, man. Oh whatever. I guess I deserve it.”   
  
Fuyuhiko sprung from the ground. He reached forward with both hands to grab Ryoma’s face. Ryoma knocked both of his hands away, and while Fuyuhiko recoiled he threw the other side of his body in a cross punch. He hit the side of Fuyuhiko’s nose. His nose and face both twisted from the blow.   
  
Fuyuhiko tried to throw his body around in another punch, but Ryoma ducked under it. He switched from american style boxing to judo as he wrapped his arms around Fuyuhiko’s lower body in a grab. He lifted him up, and for a moment Fuyuhiko was weightless, then Ryoma slammed his back into the ground and he felt gravity hit his chest, his back, his ribs, his spine. Ryoma smashed into him.   
  
His knee went into Fuyuhiko’s face, and before Fuyuhiko was even aware he had grabbed his arm, spun wrapped his legs around his shoulder and executed a full pin. Ryoma flexed his stomach muscles slowly, and Fuyuhiko slowly watched his arm bend out of shape and then break. The bone was pressing up against his skin. Funny, he stared at his broken arm a few seconds knowing something was wrong but feeling nothing at all until the pain registered to him. 

“You’re not going to make me cry.” Fuyuhiko rolled away when Ryoma let go. He bashed his head against the ground to make himself focus. He needed more pain to forget about the pain localized in his arm. Get up. Get up. Your entire life is this. You always knew it’d end up like this. You’d die in the streets just like this.   
  
“You’re always crying. You’re crying right now, man. It’s kind of embarrassing. I feel awkward now. Are you really a gangster?”   
  
Crybaby gangster.   
He said he’d never cry in front of Peko again, but all he did was ball his eyes out.   
He was the reason.   
He was the reason.   
She couldn’t smile.   
  
Fuyuhiko slowly dragged himself up to his feet once more. He had to hold onto his broken arm, and he was unsteady on his feet. Just when he could look Ryoma in the eyes again, suddenly a knee flew into his chin. His head fell back in an arc, and he saw the blood he spewed from his mouth falling away from him.   
  
His body felt weightless. He couldn’t move it. All of those hits from his dad were supposed to toughen him up. His sister. Pekoyama. They always had to stand up for him and protect him. It was never the other way around, he couldn’t do a single thing for them. He was nothing more than a punching bag right now.   
  
Ryoma lowered his knee again, and then one two, he punched both sides of Fuyuhiko’s face. Fuyuhiko bit his tongue, and swished around the blood pooling in the back of his mouth. He was a gangster, might as well fight dirty. He spit it right into Ryoma’s eyes. Ryoma saw his petty trick coming, and shielded his hand from his face.   
  
Fuyuhiko unloaded two bullets, one into each of Ryoma’s legs.   
If his fists wern’t enough then he’d use the gun he kept on his person at all times.   
Like Ryoma said.   
He wasn’t doing this to protect anybody.   
He just wanted to kill someone. 

Ryoma didn’t even look surprised.  
He didn’t look like he felt pain at all.    
  
“Tch. I have no expectations at all and yet somehow I keep getting disappointed.”   
  
“You got something to say? You’re the one who said you wanted to fight it out like gangsters.”   
  
“You fight like someone who makes a little girl do all his killing for him.”   
  
Fuyuhiko connected his shoe to Ryoma’s face before Ryoma could say anything else, and kicked him down to the floor. He brought the butt of his gun down to follow up. Ryoma caught it by blocking his face with one hand, the other he grabbed for Fuyuhiko’s wrist. Fuyuhiko noticed a moment too late, Ryoma’s thights wrapping around his neck and his legs crossing over his head.   
  
His head was being squeezed. His skull cracked from the pressure. He could barely breathe. His neck was being crushed. His whole head was going to explode like a grape. All he could do was tighten his finger around the trigger and fire wildly. The noise was so loud, it ricocheted in both of their ears.   
  
The gun slammed against the side of Ryoma’s head, again and again until it was slick with blood. Ryoma finally let go. Fuyuhiko rolled on the ground and got back to his feet. He had blood streaming from both nostrils, all the way down his chin, his entire collar was wet and his shirt was soaked through.   
  
He took a step towards Ryoma while he was still on the ground, and Ryoma grabbed for his leg, and spun around him. Fuyuhiko toppled over, and was caught in yet another hold. Ryoma slowly twisted Fuyuhiko’s lower leg, threatening to tear it out of its kneecap.   
  
Fuyuhiko tried to raise the gun to his head, but Ryoma let go then and snatched it away. He pushed Fuyuhiko further on the ground, his back, the back of his head, collided with the wet pavement. When Fuyuhiko opened his eyes again, Ryoma was sitting on top of him. The gun that had been wrestled out of his hands was pointing between his eyebrows.   
  


Fuyuhiko had suddenly recalled. As if the memory had fallen out of his brain after his head got bashed over and over again. A room filled with smoke. His father was always smoking when they spoke. He put a gun in Fuyuhiko’s hand for his birthday. That said everything about the kind of parent he was. He remembered this conversation when he was finally old enough to stand up to his father about punishing Peko in his place.   
  
“Don’t you ever fucking touch Peko again. I’ll kill both of you. Fucking scum. Is that how you treat your subordinates? Nobody will want to follow someone who beats up little girls. I’ll drag this family name through the mud.”   
  
“You’re right. I suppose I have no right to lecture you on how you treat your sword. She was me and your mom’s gift to you after all.”   
  
There was so much smoke he could not even see his father’s eyes.   
  
“What kind of madman gives a person to their son as a gift?”   
  
“Goddamn brat, just says whatever he pleases around me.” His father grumbled. This was the closest thing they ever had to father son talks. They just yelled at each other at the top of their lungs. The whole household was like this. “What do you need most to survive in our world? Family? Money? Strength? Yes, they’re all important, but that’s just pissing in the wind. None of that shit will get you respect.”   
  
“Cutting up little girls? That’s respectable to you? You gonna start doing that to Natsumi too? You going to start treating your other daughter that way?”   
  
“She’s a killer for the yakuza. Did you think she’d really live in this world without a few scars? Mistakes means death in our world.” He played with the cigar between his two fingers. “No one will follow a man they can’t respect. You must not let anyone look down on you, or it’ll be death. You know why she was hurt like that? It’s because she bowed her head, and kept apologizing to me. And you, you were just a sniveling brat, there’s no way I’d ever listen to you begging me to stop.”   
  
He tipped his cigar over Fuyuhiko’s head. As if the top of his head was an ash tray.   
  
“You want to make sure that never happens again? Become an even worse bastard than me. Put the fear of god in me. There’s nothing more shameful than a man who lets others walk all over him. Show me that I can’t mess with you. That what’s yours is yours.”   
  
He picked the revolver up, and placed it to his own forehead.   
He offered Fuyuhiko the trigger.   
Fuyuhiko pulled without hesitation.   
There were no bullets inside but Fuyuhiko didn’t care, he pulled the trigger again and again, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click and then he lost patience and bashed his father in the forehead with the butt of the gun.   
  
What surprised him was how normal his father was about this. He treated it like they were just rough housing. His father did this to him. And his father’s father did the same. They screamed at each other. They came at each other like they were going to kill each other. Scarring Peko must have just seemed like a normal punishment.  He just cut her a few times with a knife, that wasn’t throwing her out on the streets, or executing her. The yakuza regularly cut off fingers, and it was normal to cut your own guts out to apologize for a mistake. When his mother and father tried to kill each other, that was just a fight that went too far. His mother didn’t consider it domestic abuse, didn’t consider getting a divorce, because she could hit back just as hard. That’s just life in the Yakuza. A family or murderers. Completely desensitized to violence. This isn’t normal, Fuyuhiko thought. This isn’t fucking normal. He repeated it in his head again and again so he would never forget it. Even if he died here he would get Peko away from this world.   
  
He saw Ryoma’s finger on the trigger.   
Bye bye, Peko.   
I’m sorry. 

  
Ryoma let go. He let the gun fall out of his hands.   
  
“Nah.” 

  
Ryoma exhaled.   
  
“Just not feeling it man. If I’m stronger than you what does that even matter? What does beating you up even prove?”   
  
Ryoma’s voice was hoarse.   
He had one of those two packs a day voices.   
  
“I’m not strong, I’m just a coward. I’m just doing this because I’m scared of you.” 

He was scared.  
He was scared of Peko.   
He was afraid so he ran away from her. He didn’t want to lose her so he pulled on her leash. 

Before Fuyuhiko could process any of that. Before he could swallow the blood in his mouth and speak up. Kirumi suddenly came from behind. She had Ryoma’s neck in a line of garrote wire that she held between both of her hands.   
  
Ryoma kicked. For someone who looked already dead, he struggled hard for just one more breath.He slammed the top of his head against Kirumi’s chin in order to force her to let go. He slipped out of her hands and ran away. Even with two bullet holes in his legs, he kept running.   
  
Fuyuhiko turned his head around.   
He had fallen on the ground next to Pekoyama. They were both bloody messes. He reached out and tried to touch her hair. He was sorry. She was wearing a white dress, and he got blood all over it. Next time, next time, next time, he’d put her in white robes, and he’d be standing there next to her in black ones. He tried to touch her but the strength gave out in his arms just before.   
  
Takumi was standing over the two of them.   
  
“Now I really should kill both of you. That’s kind of my thing.”   
  
Takumi said.   
  
“But I don’t gotta. I don’t gotta do anything. I love being lazy. I don't need to kill either of you. I'm not even your enemy. Your enemy is her and her enemy is you, and who cares? Not me. I don't even care. Just do whatever you want."   
  
He noticed Pekoyama’s sword on the ground. Hey, free sword. Oh wait did he need to ask to borrow it? He hated asking people for things. No wait, he just hated talking to people. He was just going to take it. He would give it back later. He’d stab it through her heart to give it back to her. Just the thought of it was making him smile. He really did love murderers. 

There was no way a degenerate like him could get along with normal people. They would find him weird for smiling over something like that. He loved murderers, love, love, loved them. That’s why all of his best friends were murderers. Oh wait, he didn’t have any friends.  
  
That’s what happens when you kill what you love.   
  
“You two can just keep killing each other for all I care." 


	62. Psycho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title a reference to the alfred hitchcock movie natch.  
> Opening lines is a quote from Jujutsu Kaisen from the character Nanami.

_I never have and never will be frustrated by my own uselessness._ _  
_ _I’m just._ _  
_ _In the face of the evils of this world._ _  
_ _I’m just…  
  
_

 

🦔

 

The first thing Munakata noticed was the smell. The uniquely antiseptic smell that seems to pervade every corner. Munakata thought this scene was too clean, too sterile, too blindingly white to possibly be real. The room he was looking at resembled a hospital set for a television drama.  
  
The next thing that entered his sight was a vast, almost untouchable number of IV drips, strewn all across the pure white space. The innumerable plastic lines were each linked to a separate bag filled with a colorless liquid, but the thin tubes snaking out from them extended inward towards a single, unseen point. They numbered in the dozens, no the hundreds even, making them resemble a sort of haphazard spider web.  
  
No, he had to be imagining that. There was no way there could be that many IV drips. That was just the impression he had at the time, a spider web, and a boy caught between them. At the terminus of them all, there was a single bed, a single boy, wrapped in white sheets that seemed to melt into an equally white backdrop.  
  
Munakata unexpectedly met the eyes of the patient in the bed. Komaeda Nagito, a student of Hope’s Peak Academy, tried to sit up and reach his hands out towards Munakata. He stopped just short of touching him, because his wrist had been handcuffed to the bed.  
  
Munakata became aware of two facts immediately. The boy in front of him was hopelessly sick, and he wasn’t being kept in this hospital as a patient but a prisoner. 

“I want to save you.”  
  
Munakata murmured the words. The room was so cold he swore he could see his own frosted breath. It’s like they weren’t even trying to save Komaeda. Just freeze his corpse to prevent it from rotting.  
  
“You should never have come to Hope’s Peak in the first place.” 

“You’re far from the first member of the staff to tell me that, Munakata-senpai.” Komaeda said.  
  
Munakata’s open hand flexed at his side. His fingers felt frostbitten.

“That’s not what I meant…” This was so awkward. He was supposed to be a good public speaker. He could make speeches in front of others, but why was it so difficult to speak to one person face to face. “You were invited here only so others could take advantage of you. You’re not a student here, you’re an albino lab rat with an expendable life span-”  
  
“Ah, but that’s fine isn’t it? I’ve watched you for a long time, Munakata-senpai. I know that you of all people believe that hope requires sacrifices-”  
  
“It’s not fine. Be quiet.”

Munakata wanted to sit next to the sickly boy and keep him company, he wanted to hold his hand, but he could do neither. He felt like his body was made of tin. He felt like whoever made and shaped him in a forge had forgotten to make his heart. 

“When I was younger I was sick just like you. I thought my sickness was a burden to others. This school scouted me on the condition that they’d be able to conduct highly experimental research to search for a cure for my condition.” 

The room was exceptionally bright but Munakata felt like he was standing in shadow. His eyes were the only visible part of his face.  
  
“I was in and out of the hospital. I felt like I was being stabbed with needles every waking minute. I really thought I was doing something that would help others. I was going to die before I ever grew up into an adult, but perhaps what they learned from me could be used to cure others with my same condition. I’d been helped so many times by other people. The idea that I was finally able to help others made me happy.”  
  
“You know… I… I always wanted to ask you about.. Yourself. So I’m h-happy to finally get the chance to t-talk…” Komaeda’s eyes were barely able to focus. He must have perceived Munakata as a blur. “Ugh, I’m worthless. I can barely even string a sentence together. My tongue has atrophied from lack of use…” 

“Don’t exert yourself. Just listen.” His overly direct and terse way of speaking was the only way he knew how to be gentle. “They had no interest in curing me from the start. I was the prototype for the Kamukura project, they butchered a boy around your age using data they collected from me. They were never going to help anyone with that data. They used me, they used you, for their own ends right from the start.”  
  
“But what if I want to be used? I’d gladly give my body to this school for the sake of hope.”  
  
“I understand.”  
  
“You do? That might be the first time I’ve ever heard somebody say that to me.”  
  
“You’re trying to see past your own suffering. It feels like your accident, just a random tragedy. You’re trying to build on that. If you can think about somebody other than yourself. If you can help somebody other than yourself. Then going through what you did might be seen as worth it. It’s the same as studying hard for a big test to get a good grade, or working out hard in a gym before a boxing match. Everyone endures a little bit of suffering because they think a good ending will justify it. Your thinking is just an extreme application of that idea.”  
  
“Hahaha, how do you explain it so well Munakata-sensei? When I try to say it, it all comes out of my mouth as garbled of gobbly-gook. Just a bunch of nonsense.”  
  
“I used to think everybody thought the same way as I did. That’s why I thought my way of thinking should have been easy to understand.”  
  
“What did you think? Oh, I probably won’t understand even if you explain it in really small words. I can’t possibly understand the thoughts of another person-”  
  
“I thought everyone wanted to help the same way I did. I thought if there was a crying child in the street, then for sure, at least one person would reach out a helping hand. Everyone walking on the street that day is in their own little world, they all have their own problems to deal with, but some people will be able to think of the child too, that’s hope.”

The truth Munakata realized was far worse than he cold possibly imagine.  
It wasn’t that most people would go out of their way to be cruel to the crying child. Most people would not kick, harm, or shout at the child to shut up. Most people would just pretend they had not seen the child and keep walking. Most people would do nothing. That was the reality he had seen ever since he came to hope’s peak. 

That was why doing nothing, choosing not to act was the worst possible choice for Munakata.  
  
“Please have a little bit more self esteem. It’s terrible to compare yourself to me.”

“Nobody’s helped you since you came to this school. They want to scapegoat you for this. Make it seem like you were a bad child from the start.” Munakata picked up case files he had left from the desk. He threw them onto the bed. Pictures of Komaeda’s classmates, and papers containing the details of their lives spilled in the air. Komaeda picked up the photos of his classmates and tried to hold onto them like they were precious things. “You’ve just been unlucky. If you hadn’t been chosen for the lottery, you never would have been dragged to this school and taken advantage of. Testify against them. I want to be the person who finally helps you." 

“Is there something wrong with your head? Ah, I’m speaking to my senpai so disrespectfully please forgive me. Why do you think I’m the one who needs to be protected? Everyone needs to be protected from me.”  
  
“Because… you were just trying to help. Even though nobody helped you.”  
  
Munakata’s voice was fainter than the sound of Koameda’s heartbeat on the monitor. He was afraid if he talked too loud the boy’s heart might stop.  
  
“Senpai... “ Komaeda was smiling. Like he was seeing a happy dream in front of his eyes. “Have you ever wanted to make someone happy?”  
  
“I…” 

Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko. He beat a reserve course student over the head with a hammer, and then took pictures to send to another student. The bodies of both of his parents were found sunk at the bottom of a river. Pekoyama is suspected of complicity in 136 murders, and 312 cases of extortion, along with various sundry and other crimes in association with the yakuza.

“I guess it wasn’t much to a person like you, but… Kuzuryuu-kun once told me he could use a guy like me at one of his illegal casinos, if I didn’t have anywhere else to go once we graduated.”  
  
Tanaka Gundhman wanted for three counts of murder. Suspected for conspiracy and treason against a foreign government. The man now believed to be his biological father was found dead with his tongue cut out.  
  
“I once put poison in his animal feed by accident, and Tanaka-kun forgave me.”  
  
Sonia Nevermind. Wanted for conspiracy and treason. It’s believed she helped a revolutionary movement overthrow her own family’s monarchy, destroying the government of the kingdom of Novoselic and further destabilizing the region.  
  
“Sonia-san invited me to class parties, even when the rest of the class told her not to. She was the only reason I got to go.” 

Kazuichi Soda. His father was found beaten to death with a wrench. The body was discovered after an incident of arson burned the entire mechanic shop where him and his father made their home. He’s suspected of building several bombs behind recent serial bombing incidents.  
  
“Kazuichi-kun once got hit by a car because he was near me, and he told me it wasn’t my fault. It was just his fault for being a klutz and not looking both ways when he crossed the road.”

Tsumiki Mikan. Three counts of murder in the first degree. A body of a male nurse was discovered stabbed repeatedly in the eyeballs with a scalpel. His hands were cut off with a bone saw. Her father and mother were discovered perfectly preserved and sewn together. It’s currently unknown how long they were dead before being discovered. Suspected of multiple accounts of human experimentation with the Kamukura project. 

“And M-mikan she… she always noticed when I came to school with injuries. She walked quietly with me to the nurse’s office, and wrapped me up in bandages. Mikan can't wrap people up in bandages anymore. She just hurts people now, she forgot how to help but that's fine...” 

Komaeda had given up on healing ever since he came to this school. He never once saw this as a hospital, just a hospice to slowly and comfortably wait for his end. That was why he could not feel betrayed that Hope’s Peak never intended to help with his cancer from the start.  
  
“If only I hadn’t come to this school, how could you say that? I was happy to come here and meet them. That’s why I wanted them to be happy. Happy and hopeful. I… I’m not the only person who has bad luck. If only… if only they weren’t talented. If only people didn’t expect so much of them, they wouldn’t have been pushed into a corner.” 

Hope’s Peak is shit. This was never a school it was a research lab that took in children that nobody would pay close attention to. That’s why I wanted to come back and destroy this school. I wanted to slaughter the heads of all of the executives on the board of trustees. When I first heard they were being murdered one by one, I smiled. I thought they were finally getting what they deserved.  
  
If Enoshima hadn’t destroyed this school then in a few years I would have done it with my own hands.  
  
I’m shit. I’m a human with no concept of having “something worth doing” or a “purpose in life.” Yet somehow I think I can do better than the people currently running this school. Strange drugs. Experiments. People willing to use money and government connections to make anyone who spoke out disappear. I faced that all alone. Because I had that hope with me. That I could make this school better. Four years ago I killed a person for the first time because I couldn’t afford to choose what measures I took, and I couldn’t afford to spare him.  
  
From that day on I thought I was the one who to measure the scales. To save even one life on one side, I had to forsake another life on the other side.  
  
That is, to let the majority of people survive, I had to kill a minority of people.

Therefore, rather than saving people for the sake of saving them. Rather than trying to create hope. I eliminated despair. I killed. As long as I accomplish good results in the end the methods don’t matter, the number of people I kill don’t matter. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. Without even thinking about it. Kill.  
  
Never questioning the righteousness of my actions, or doubint my goal, I forced myself to faultlessly tip the scale. With no regard for the substance of an individual life, every life was the same of me, they all weighed evenly on the scales.  
  
But unfortunately I realized this too late.  
Trying to help everybody equally, is the same as not loving anyone uniquely.  Even two people who were the first two friends you ever made in your life. Even the two people who accepted you when no one else would. Even the two people who would do anything for you, who would die for you, you can’t love them. Komaeda you wanted everyone to be happy, right? But wishing for that means.  
  
You can’t make a single person happy. You’re right in front of me and I can’t save you. Again I can’t save. Just one person.  
  
Munakata finally touched Komaeda’s fingers.  
He was careful.  
Fearful.  
  
“Testify against them. I want to save at least one of Yukizome’s students.”  
  
“Why can’t you save all of us? I think that would be a truly hopeful and inspiring ending.” Komaeda read the look  of absolute misery that spread against Munakata’s face. “Ah, I guess not.”  
  
“...”

 _I’m sorry._  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“...”

 _I’m sorry._  
  
“Is your face leaking?”  
  
“... it’s not.”  
_I hope one day you’ll hear those words. I’m sorry._ _  
_  
“Are you crying? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Nobody would cry over someone like me. You must be crying over my classmates. I'm sad too, senpai. I wish I could cry like that, it must feel refreshing. Munakata-senpai, please don’t worry about me anymore. I would much rather have you take care of yourself. You’re going to go insane at this rate.” 

Komaeda’s words were almost prophetic.  
It was like a whisper of a shinigami telling him how he was going to die.  
He had already lost one eye, and Munakata could feel himself losing his mind now too.  
  
🦔

 

Munakata and Sakakura with some distance between them. Their wrists were chained together by long handcuffs. It was probably the closest they would ever come to holding hands.  
  
Munakata was player one.  
Sakakura was player two.  
  
I call this forced teamwork. If it’s for the sake of everyone getting along in the end then it’s fine, right? 

Munakata was still coming down from the effects of the drug in his system. His pupils had shrunken into pin pricks. His eye was dark and heavy, the other eye was bandaged up. He looked a bit like Dorian Gray after he destroyed the painting, all of the ugliness he had been hiding came to the surface. 

“Munakata. Enoshima didn’t really have any dangerous black mail on me. I couldn’t man up and confess my love for you, and she… knew about that, and used it… to make me… shut up…”  
  
“That was stupid of you.”  
  
“What? Letting the world end over one little crush?”  
  
“No, falling in love with me.”  
  
Munakata really was bad at talking to people face to face. Sakakura felt somehow Munakata had made the situation between them even more awkward.  
  
“Munakata.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Me and Chisa are your best friends. You know we’d do anything for you. So, why do you always leave the two of us behind and try to do everything on your own?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Do you know how much I hated myself for betraying you? All I wanted to be was the one person you could trust. I thought I had to make it up to you somehow. That’s why I kept trying so hard to…”  
  
“...”  
  
“But - it’s like nothing I did even mattered to you. You didn’t see any of it. Did I even hurt you? Did anything I do even affect you? You never trusted me… no, it’s like we were never even friends in the first place.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You’re such an unfriendly guy… God, being around you is like bashing my fists against a wall, and I’m the idiot who just loves to punch things until his hands are broken. Hey. We’ve been friends since high school? I thought I was the only real friend you had. Why can’t you talk to me?”  
  
“Sakakura, you’re a good guy and I’m not. That’s why.”  
  
“That’s why what?”  
  
“Even if I explained it you wouldn’t understand it, we’re just too different.”  
  
“Shut up, I’m not dumb.I’m at least smart enough to know that nobody’s going to understand anything unless you try to explain yourself.” Sakakura losing patience, grabbed Munakata and slammed him into a wall. He found it easier to talk to Munakata when he was pinned down.  
  
Sakakura towering over him cast a large shadow.  
To Munakata it felt like.  
The moon eclipses the sun.  
  
“You care about people. You cared so much about Chisa, you couldn’t just abandon her when somebody was trying to hurt her.”  
  
“You were the one trying to hurt her.”  
  
“That’s what I was saying. I didn't try to save her, you did. You help people because you care about them. I help them because I want a sense of worth.”  
  
“Worth?”  
  
“Let’s say a kid is about to be hit by a car. I jump in front of him and save his life, but break my bones. I may have to be hospitalized for weeks afterwards, but I think at least I saved that kid. That’s proof that I’m not completely worthless as a person.” 

“Eh? So? The kid got saved didn’t he?”  
  
“But. I don’t really care about that kid. Not the way you do. I don’t have something like a personality. No it’s more like I use the word _hope_ as a flimsy bandaid to cover up for my total lack of personality.” 

“What?” 

“You like boxing and sweets. Yukizome likes cleaning, she finds it fun. What do I like? Nothing. There’s nothing I particularly enjoy either. Our high school days may be precious memories for you but for me they’re nothing more than a slideshow in my head. They’re just a series of events that I wasn’t present in, just adjacent too.”  
  
“...”  
  
“That same kid that I saved by jumping in front of a car. If somebody told me that killing that kid would save the lives of a hundred people I didn’t know, I think I’d kill him without hesitation.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Do you remember when I stabbed you?” Munakata reached out with his long fingers, and felt underneath Sakakura’s shirt for the wound he had inflicted upon him. Even when he touched the scar, his eyes did not show the slightest change in emotion. “I was surprised at how easy it was. It didn’t hurt me even a little bit.” 

Juzo’s entire face flinched in pain.  
Munakata’s stayed neutral. Emotionless. All of that screaming he had done before now just seemed tiresome. He wondered if he had been play-acting. If he had just pretended to break down. To feel desperate and lost like everybody else.  
  
“Well of course it didn’t fucking hurt you, you’re not the one who got stabbed, ya dick!” 

“I thought if one of the three of us had to be the one to dirty their hands then it had to be me.”  
  
Sakakura headbutted Munakata as hard as he could.  
It was much more violent than a kiss.  
He bashed his head against Munakata’s again and again but it didn’t relieve his stress even a little bit. He wasn’t even able to put a crack in the wall Munakata had built between.

“If you think you’re so much smarter than me then why do you say stupid shit like that all the time? You’re a bad person, huh? You’re worthless, huuuuuuuh? Then why am I even friends with you?”

Munakata’s lips curled into a chilly smile. Sakakura could feel his heart freeze.  
  
“That’s a good question. Why are you?”  
  
Even you, Sakakura.  
Being your friend.  
Made me feel like I was worth something.  
  
There's the boy they called the _young hope._ A teen prodigy that was going to save Hope’s Peak Academy and rid it of corruption. There is a task I must complete. There’s a quest that’s been assigned to someone’s idea of a hero. But there is no real me, only an ideal to be fulfilled. If I were to take my clothes off, you wouldn’t be able to see me naked Sakakura. I would simply disappear. I’m insivible underneath my white suit and black dress shirt. I barely fill them out. There’s not enough of me to fill any container. You could reach your hand and touch the skin under my shirt, you could even feel the curvature of the muscles on my stomach, but skin on skin you wouldn’t feel any warmth at all. _I exist in ideals._  
  
Myself is fabricated. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago, (ironically at Hope’s Peak) if they ever did exist. That’s why I tried to build myself around the idea of hope. I tried to use my own ideas of justice and call that a personality.  
  
That’s why I understand despair better than anyone else. I know exactly how a person with no hope acts. All I need to do is look in the mirror to see this.  
  
I couldn’t save just one person.  
I couldn’t love one person.  
I can’t love you, Sakakura.  
That’s why I have to kill you.  
  
You’ve always known exactly the kind of person I am. You know I’m jealous and possessive. I don’t like when people get near Chisa. I don’t like the idea that she might choose her students over her loyalty to me. I felt like a good person when I was around Chisa. I didn’t understand a single thing about Chisa. I thought Chisa was a good person too. I thought we looked good together. All I did was read off the surface. I have a petty and shallow idea of how the world works. I like that she needed me. When she started clinging to me and begged her to protect me I was happy, because that meant Chisa would never let go of me.

I don’t even sound remotely human. None of these words sound like the words a human would use to describe themselves. 

Basically I’m full of shit.  
Everytime I open my mouth and talk about hope, I’m full of shit.  
You knew that and followed me anyway.  
You’d follow me anywhere. Knowing exactly the kind of person I am.  
  
And that’s why I hate you. 

How else is a fake supposed to feel when confronted with someone so genuine? All I know is the idea of being good. You really are a good guy. You’re the only person that feels real to me.  
  
Munakata and Juzo simply stared into each other’s eyes for a long stretch of silence. Longer than the many years they had known each other. Munakata’s mouth twitched. He looked like he was about to do something with his lips then.  
  
Pink.  
Lips.  
Pink.  
With blood.  
Munakata’s blood all over him.  
  
Sakakura saw pink. Munakata had coughed blood in his face. Sakakura let go, and Munakata wiped at his mouth with the tie he had stuffed into his pocket. 

“Munakata. Stop saying that shit. I’m the one who knows you best.” Juzo grinded his teeth. “The only one who knows exactly how big of an idiot you are is me. Quit acting like you hate yourself. Nobody hates you more than I do right now. Quit acting like you’re angry. Nobody’s more pissed off at you then me.”  
  
Juzo threw a punch.  
He stopped just short of Munakata’s nose so his bracelet would not go off.  
The centimeters between his fist and Munakata’s face.  
That was the distance between them.  
  
Before Juzo could say anything else, Munakata’s whole body wretched. Juzo slowly turned around thinking that the killer in a slasher film might be standing right behind his back. He was right.  
  
He saw a corpse put on display like an art piece. 

 

🦔

 

Sakakura had heard Munakata say he didn’t care. 

He didn’t really need to be told his best friend was full of shit. He loved the guy but it’s not like he was blind. You don’t spend that many years with a person and have no idea of who they are.  
  
It was because he had been watching Munakata all this time that he had seen things even Munakata himself did not see. There was nobody that got angrier when he saw someone get hurt right in front of his eyes than Munakata.  
  
He used to be a big crybaby about it, but as he got older he started to get angry instead. Sakakura couldn’t fault him for this. There were plenty of things that pissed him off too.  
  
Munakata hates people like Kirigiri Jin and Naegi Makoto.  
They think the world is full of hope, but that’s because they don’t look at despair.  
Juzo knew that Munakata felt Kirigiri had nothing but good intentions.  
  
He invited Hinata, Komaeda, Matusda all to be part of the Kamukura project, but he really thought he was helping them. He never confronted the dark side of Hope’s Peak. He loved talent. He thought talent could overcome everything. He never once thought that talent could make someone suffer.  
  
Munakata was much softer on a guy like Komaeda. 

Komaeda lived by staring straight at despair like Munakata did. Makoto and Jin thought the world was a much better place than it really was. Komaeda and Munakata thought the world should have been better. They thought of the people around them. The world. It could all be better. So sometimes looking at the people right in front of them they just felt a bitter disappointment.  
  
Sakakura could understand. Munakata was always angry. He was angry too.  
He just wished.  
Munakata hadn’t stopped smiling.  
  
Munakata wretched. His whole body twisted in disgust at the sight of the corpse. Sakakura felt his heart was a lot stiller. What Munakata felt was disgust, but Sakakura felt sadness that a person had just died here.  
  
Even though they were fighting just a moment ago. Sakakura patted his friend on the back, and told him to vomit if he felt sick.  
  
“Who did this…?” 

“Hey? Why are you looking at me funny? Oh, I get it just because I murder people I’m a murderer now!” Zerozaki Hitoshiki grumbled in his raspy voice.  
  
“Yes, that is exactly how that works.” Ikkun mumbled.  
  
“Oh, wow cool!” Angie slapped her hands on her cheeks. She had a wide starry-eyed expression as always. Zerozaki sometimes wondered what the world looked like through her eyes, it must have been very fun, and at least a little bit frightening.  
  
On the other side of the corpse displayed as art.  
The two of them had a random encounter.  
With Zerozaki, Ikkun, and Angie. 

Before Sakakura could stop him, Munakata unsheathed his katana and swung. Zerozaki thought he was the obvious target, and almost paid for that mistake with his life. He realized a half of a second too late it was Angie, and had to jump in front of her and block the blow with his shoulder instead of his knife.  
  
Munakata watched his sword sink into Zerozaki’s flesh. He ripped it out just as fast, and his sword met Zerozaki’s knife. Ikkun yawned like he was already bored of the scene.  
  
“Oi, oi, oi the hell are you doing trying to slice up little girls?”  
  
“She’s the killer. Her tagline is kills artistically. All the corpses have been made into art displays so far.”  
  
“Tch, I know I should be the last human being on earth suggesting that but maybe we shouldn’t be killing people right now?” Zerozaki grinded his naturally sharp teeth. “Just call me an anti-establishment punk, but when someone starts telling me to kill someone it totally ruins the mood.” 

“It's not like I want to kill her. She just has to die.”  
  
“Has to? What are you even talking about? You sound exactly the same as those killer killer nutjobs. I bet as long as they went around killing your enemies instead of your friends you’d let them run around unsupervised.”  
  
“I would. So what?”  
  
“Crime and evil are not the same. Let’s say Angie is the killer, that doesn’t make her evil. She’s not darkness that needs to be eradicated off of the face of the earth. Just this once, me, a murderer doesn’t want anyone else to die.” 

  
“So?”  
  
“She’s got like substance to her, and a personality!”  
  
“Actually I’m a pretty shallow person.” Angie said, excitedly behind Zerozaki waving her arms about. She didn’t even seem to notice that Zerozaki was in pain, that he was wounded, that he was bleeding. 

Munakata didn’t praise or speak ill of people.  
It’s not that he was judging them as good or evil. And he certainly didn’t hate them.  
What he wanted was order.  
He once thought.  
Everyone thought the same way as he did.  
That if someone was in trouble it was only natural to help. That was the order of things. He realized he was wrong. There was no order. If a child was lost in a crowd of people, most wouldn’t choose to hurt or help. Most would just remain ignorant to that person. That’s senseless. That’s nonsense.  
  
How was a person meant to cope with the absurdities of the world?  
The only thing that can oppose the absurd is order.  
Order which protects those who abide by the law and condemns those who break it.

Substance doesn’t matter.  
Personality doesn’t matter.  
It’s the norms and standards that must be upheld at any cost. Munakata didn’t like anything in particular, but he liked organized things, he liked disciplined people, he like neat and tidy things.  
  
He knew more than anyone else that hope requires sacrifice.  
_“Have you ever wanted to make someone happy?”_

If there was one thing that made him hesitate.  
He wondered why it was always people like Komaeda who had to be sacrificed. Order. Prevents senseless victims. That’s what Munakata thought. So why did people like Komaeda always get thrown away senselessly. 

 _You only ever thought of others._ _  
_ _You were a good friend right until the end, Komaeda._

But Munakata would kill him.  
Even when upholding the order goes against his own desires. He would simply kill those desires.  
  
“This is the only salvation that exists for those in despair.”  
  
“What are you a fucking psycho?” 

Zerozaki’s knives moved, but Munakata moved faster. Zerozaki felt himself losing his footing, and crashing back to the ground.  
  
“No, this is determination. The determination to do what's right when nobody else will."   
  
“Oh wow you’re determined to kill people. So fucking heroic…” Zerozaki mumbled as he grabbed his side. He could already feel himself slipping away. "I'm the murderer. Kill the right guy at least. Kill me."   
  
Munakata took a step forward, but he reached the end of his chain. At the other side of it was Sakakura. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” He guessed this wasn’t something they could talk out. Both of them were only good for fighting.  
  
“Sakakura.”  
  
“If you have your idea of what’s right then I have my own idea of what’s right too.”  
  
“Why do you always have to…”  
  
“It’s called ‘not letting my best friend fucking kill people right in front of me’.”  
  
“Get in my way?”  
  
“It’s my job.”  
  
Munakata’s sword, met the chain that Sakakura had grabbed with his bare hands to block with. While Sakakura and Munakata turned against each other again, Zerozaki started to crawl away and Ikkun stopped looking bored at the whole scene and helped him get back.  
  
They were best friends.  
They understood each other better than anyone else. They knew the most intimate details.  
If they could just work together once they could cover each other’s weak points.  
But they both just saw those vulnerabilities as targets.  
Why did they always have to fight?  
  
Both men already knew the reason.  
“Because I love you.”  
“Because I hate you.”  
  
Even if it kills me.   
Even if it kills you.   
I can’t let you go. 


	63. Ichi the Killer

_ Storms have always put me at ease. _ _   
_ _ There’s just something about the way they ravage our ridiculous world and wash it away like so much sludge.  _ _   
_ _   
_ Zerozaki knew the other guy would say this.    
“People, storms, unpredictable things, they’re all the same to me. I only ever feel a great unease.” If he said that out loud though Zerozaki  was pretty sure he’d want to slap the scowl off of Ikkun’s face and tell him to stop being so pretentious. 

 

The three of them had just gotten away from Munakata, but then Angie started complaining her feet hurt so Zerozaki stopped to let her climb on his back, and that mode of transportation had slowed them down a bit. Ikkun also seemed like the type who hated giving effort in anything so a few minutes of jogging had completely wiped him out.    
  
“Thanks for helping me back there…” Zerozaki said awkwardly, because he usually didn’t feel like thanking everybody. He was a murderer who was basically homeless and lived off of the wallets he found in dead people’s pockets, he didn’t have much to say thank you for.    
  
“I wasn’t helping you.”    
  
“Ehhhh?”    
  
“I was just helping myself.” Ikkun explained, expressionlessly. “Of the three of us you’re the only one who knows how to fight. Also you’re the most likely one to be targeted, and since you’re a killer I don’t really care if you die.”    
  
“Oh yeah, is that something you normally do? Do you just tell people you don’t care if they die right to their faces! Treat people with respect!”    
  
“Mm, okay. But you’re not a person so I don’t have to bother.”    
  
“Well, you could have just left me behind to die to buy you more time to escape, and ya didn’t.”    
  
“Oh, you’re right that would have been the smarter option.”    
  
“Gahahahahahaha!” Ikkun really had no idea what Zerozaki found so funny, but on the other hand he was sure Zerozaki had no idea why Ikkun was always scowling. “In other words you don’t care even if your friends die, right?”    
  


 

  
“No, even a guy like me undergoes some shock at the death of a friend. It’s just that you two haven’t become friends yet.”    
  
Ikkun was the closest with Zerozaki, but that closeness was to blame for why they could never be friends. He couldn’t respond to affection with affection, and aggressive displays of emotion were totally foreign to him. Angie’s carefree nature was also something he completely lacked.    
  
“Does a guy like you even have friends?”    
  
“I exercise my right to remain silent under questioning.”    
  
“I will be your friend. As long as you recruit three other friends underneath you!”   
  
A friendship pyramid scheme. Zerozaki thought the girl on his back was truly terrifying. Angie wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and leaned her head forward on his shoulder to join the conversation, but Ikkun seemed to be bothered. He disliked watching people get too close. It looked like it irritated his skin.    
  
“Hey, why don’t you have friends? Why? Why? Why?” Angie’s voice was melodic as always. Ikkun likened to a siren that lured sailors in and then dashed their bodies on sharp rocks. “Is it because of your looks? Your personality? Your stupid haircut?”    
  


“Well, most people who get to know me don’t even want to be friends. There is nothing about me as a human being that appeals to others, write that down. Next, even someone like me is capable of a little bit of kindness, I don’t want to drag others down.”    
  
“That’s not kindness man, that's laziness.” Zerozaki stuck his tongue out in disgust. “You’re so self conscious. It’s just us three and you’re still worried about us judging you. I mean I’m a crazy serial killer, and Angie’s a crazy cultie, who the fuck cares what we think? You. You the fuck who cares.”    
  
The worst thing to tell a person who’s suffering is that they’re simply not trying hard enough. For example, Komaeda Nagito. For example, Kumagawa Misogi. “What do you understand - What do you understand…” 

 

 “I don’t understand myself at all but I think I got you pegged. You just don’t like being around other people. Everyone just makes you feel puny.”   
  
“Hey - wait. I do not see why you have to go that far I-” 

 

Ahh. Zerozaki really was a killer. He had stabbed Ikkun exactly where it hurt.He would have fought back but he was too overwhelmed. All he could think of was five years abroad attempting to become someone talented.    
  
Those with talent towered over him. They were like stone statues. These idols had everything he wanted. They were everything he wanted to become. So… why did they look so sad? What right did they have to look sad? How dare they be happy getting everything they wanted. They should try making due with less. Less, and less, and less until there’s nothing left. He saw a crack in the stone, and then the great statues called talent collapsed and broke on top of him killing him instantly.    
  
“What is wrong with that?”    
  
One day, to be thought of as useless.   
Somewhere, to be realized as being puny.   
What was wrong with being afraid of being tossed by the roadside?   
What was wrong with being afraid of being betrayed.    
  
“Trust is sad. Trust is very sad. It’s like asking to break. It’s like asking to crumble. It’s like asking to never feel whole again.”

  
“Nah, you’re sad, man. You can’t even trust anyone. How sad is that?” 

 

Ikkun had a thought so jarring and sudden it was like lightning striking his nerves. He was fried. He could feel the circuits in his brain melting. If I were to kill the person right in front of me. It would not even count as murder. I would not be taking a life. Zerozaki, a murderer, should just die. Those who couldn’t possibly get along with others, who couldn’t do anything but hurt others, they had to be removed like a leech, he could imagine the sound of the rings and rings of teeth slowly peeled away from the skin of his arm.    
  
“And if anyone ever trusts you, you’ll kill them.”    
  
“Oi shut up, I’ve been dragging around Ange this entire time.”    
  
“Because you’re the one that is going to kill her.”    
  
You’re the sad one. Not me.    
A lonesome boy who doesn’t want to be around others.   
A dangerous psycho who can’t be around others.    
  
Perhaps it was a mistake to think they were friends. Zerozaki bit his lip with a pointed tooth. They were merely tolerating each other.    
  
“Atua says if you can’t trust other people, then you can just put all of your trust in god.”    
  
“God doesn’t exist.” Ikkun said rather undramatically.    
  
“That’s fine. That’s fine. Other people don’t exist either.”    
  
Their banter had already fallen into the background noise for Zerozaki. Seriously, what was he doing? Seriously? Seriously? Jokingly? This scenery was too white he needed to paint it black. Everything around him was too vague. He needed something sharp and immediate like the edge of a knife. Take his arm. Break it in half. The jagged edge of a bone puncturing the skin. Say something. Someone say something. It’s too quiet.    
  
He needed noise. He needed chaos. He needed a storm, otherwise he would disappear. 

It’s not that he cared when other people died. It’s not that he experienced any guilt at all. It’s not that he even thought he had the capacity to feel guilt or care in the first place, and if he regretted his actions that strongly he would just never do anything wrong, everyone who was capable of murdering someone must feel no real guilt over murder otherwise they never would have done it. The only people capable of desiring to murder someone else have already crossed that line. Once it’s crossed what right did you have to suddenly start pretending to act like a human being again with guilt, morals, restraint, a conscience? The moment you kill someone you’re a failure, you’re disqualified. No, what he felt was a more nebulous and frightening thing. 

 

He was scared that it didn’t feel real.    
  
He needed it to bleed when he cut. He needed blood in the cut. You kill people because they don’t feel real to you? What a stupid motivation. No that’s not it. You kill others to make yourself feel something? No, you’ve got it all wrong. Killing makes me feel nothing. He wanted to feel something besides killing. He wanted to be anything besides a murderer.    
  
Zerozaki Hitoshiki disliked gore flicks and splatter movies. He did not understand the appeal of that kind of amusement in itself. Not just horror, but war movies, disaster movies, and all the way to adventure movies and drama; why does fiction keep repeating meaningless violence? 

 

It was probably because people didn’t live close to death, they thought there must be some kind of appealing aspect about it. In a civilized society  people consume death over and over again in a virtual experience, observing it from afar through the lens of fiction. However, in a warzone, nobody has a taste for horror movies.

 

People attempt to understand, and when they can’t feel these things themselves, you can overcome them by observing those who do taste those sensations, that’s why a silver screen or a cathode-ray tube brings tears of screams, grief, and anguish.    
  
That is good. That’s understandable. People would become curious about death, people would want to explore things they don’t understand in a safe fictional space. However for Zerozaki that’s how he felt, unable to taste those sensations, he was always observing other people who could. He was so numb to it, blood, screams, splattering everywhere, and gore wasn’t that least bit realistic. He felt so distant from everybody else, that wounds might as well be painted on with special makeup, slaughtered bodies may as well have been fake, and blood splashes were just red ink. 

 

The world for him was unbelievably fuzzy and indistinct. He had been anesthetized over and over again due to repeated exposure to pain. 

The vivid red of the hemorrhagic artery, the touch and the warmth of what was inside the abdominal cavity. The agony of the victim getting these pulled out until death. The musical tone of the screams. He didn’t experience any of this.  There was really nothing special about death to him. 

 

He tried to find himself in hyperviolence but he found nothing. Then he realized the people next to him, those ordinary law-abiding citizens were living much fuller, and far more vivid lives than he had ever lived. For him a life where you went to school everyday, got chewed out by the teacher, had an argument with your friends, came home to fight with your family, was far more filled with strife and way more exciting than a life where you were constantly on the run from the law. He could not imagine how people lived feeling such a full range of emotions every single day. He couldn’t guess himself what it must be to live the life of a human being.    
  
However, the moment he realized that these people were having far more fun than he was he fell into despair. There was no way he could ever be like them. Maniacs have no place where they belong or call home. It’s not like he had some kind of trauma to recover from, or any excuse. The people that get saved are always virtuous people and no one else.    
  
What’s important is.   
What’s important is.    
Zerozaki believed the opposite of Ikkun. Ikkun wanted to express himself as vaguely as possible. In Zerozaki there were feelings that he was dying to express. Almost literally.    
  
He left his home searching for others who were just as crazy as he was. Maniacs who are wandering this world seeking a place where they belong. What’s important is understanding who you are.    
  
Zerozaki wanted to meet at least one person who was like him, to confirm he was real after all. He wanted someone just as crazy as he was. He could stare straight into the meaningless destruction of a storm, and feel a little more sane in comparison. Knowing that he could never feel what real people felt, he just wanted to simulate a tiny bit of that life. The same way that real people simulated blood and guts to know what he felt. 

 

_ Ah, but I don’t get along with most guys who are like me.  _ _   
_ _ I guess I’m a difficult bitch.  _   
  
Damnit. Don’t act like you know me.    
You can’t know me because nobody does.    
_ I’m.  _ _   
_ _ Me.  _ _   
_ _ Seriously fuck off Ikkun, I’ll fucking kill you.  _ _   
  
_

Zerozaki’s reality suddenly sharpened again. The feral dog, clawing at his face, gave a sharp smile. There was one scent he would recognize even if his head was shoved underwater.    
  
The scent of blood. 

 

🦔

  
  


The moment you decide to kill someone it makes a victim.   
Takumi Hijirahara was that victim. He certainly smelled like someone who had crawled into a locker and died.    
  
He festered.   
He was rotten.   
Inside and out.    
  
He made no attempts to hide it and no attempts to appear normal. He couldn’t wear a tie straight, his hair was a mess, and one of his eyes was always hidden by his hair. He was the very picture of the word shifty, and he couldn’t quite sit still either. 

  
Takumi didn’t think he was particularly insane. He just thought that death felt real.    
  
Feelings such as the attachment for human life, anger and affection, more intense then they had ever felt while they were life, and far deeper and richer in meaning seemed to pop up for those who hovered around death. When on the verge of death, very common people will behave strangely, and on the other hand, people seen as exceptional will die in an extremely banal way.    
  
A talented person will kill just like anybody else. What Takumi was searching for wasn’t death really, it was its complete opposite, life. When he went into the locker he felt like he lost something. If he had to describe it, it was “the feeling of being alive.”    
  
He shut off. His brain flipped all the switches that were no longer necessary. He no longer knew what it was like to be friends with another person, to walk with them to school everyday, to talk on the rooftop. The life he had lived previously seemed so fictional to him it might as well have been a drama on television. He was sorry, Shuuji. He no longer knew what it was like to be friends with that boy. He had left all feelings behind. Behind in a corpse that had never been buried. 

 

The only time he remembered what that felt like was when he re-lived the moment of his own death. When he brought himself close to death again it was like all of the switches turned off, for a brief moment he understood what he had been like before.    
  
For example how did it feel like to not constantly feel like you were dying? To not have every small misfortune trigger the alarm bells in your head and immediately make you think of death? To not feel like your life, every single day is a battlefield where you can die or be killed at any time?    
  
Takumi had no idea, but he felt like he could understand it. If only he could understand other people a little bit more. But nobody wanted to show them his true face. He really only understood people. Ikusaba Mukuro. Shuuji Shinguuji. With the exact same damage that he had.    
  
While Takumi could not possibly find the words to accurately explain why he felt this compulsion, if his damaged brain really had to sum it up, he would call it “love.” A survivor of a school shooting. A boy beaten into a different shape entirely, until nobody from his former life recognized him, until he didn’t even recognize himself. He loved murder. He loved murder because it was familiar. The same way a child hit over and over again will come to recognize being hit as familiar.    
  
He never should have gotten close to Munakata Kei. He didn’t have a single thing in common with a person who didn’t want to kill others. Just like a child from a happy home has nothing in common from a child with a miserable one. If only he had stuck to outcasts and degenerates, to his own kind.    
  
“Whoa baby!”    
  
Takumi declared, grabbing his heart the moment he was face to face with Zerozaki Hitoshiki. His own face had been smashed in by Killer Tennis’ racket, but he had no problem at all seeing out of only one eye.   
  
“Is your heart alright?” Zerozaki asked. “You look like shit man.”    
  
“Yeah well you look like… Damnit I can’t come up with a good comeback. How do I manage to talk all the time and yet never say anything funny, clever or intelligent?” Takumi suddenly looked serious. “The heart itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was the feelings inside of it.”    
  
“Eh? But killers like us don’t even have a heart.” 

  
  


  
  
“Then there’s no problem at all.” Takumi lifted up the revolver he had stolen from Fuyuhiko. “Serial killer the prowler. Chooses his victims at random. Your excellent technique with the knives. Your audacity to kill in broad daylight, and not even worry about cleaning up the crime scenes or leaving fingerprints behind. Your attitude of always remaining alone, continuing to walk the path you’re on, no matter how many corpses litter the ground at your feet.”    
  
“Wait, the prowler? That’s what the news is calling me? I wanted them to call me the crawler like you know nightcrawler, something like that yeah I could feel my individuality skyrocket..”    
  
“The trash hauler.” Angie chimed in.    
  
“The crybaby baller,” Ikkun joined as well just to be annoying.    
  
“I said the crawler, the crawler! Both of you guys suck!”    
  
“”Your murder skills and your philosophy backed by your body count. Your murder is with zero points. Disgusting. I’ll show you a real random killing.”    
  
“Oi, oi.” Zerozaki barked. “There’s no reason to fight.” 

 

“Who do you think you are? You’re a psycho! You’re broken beyond all repair, and so am I!” Takumi said, as he spun the revolver around in his fingers. “That’s the only reason we need to kill each other.” 

  
Zerozaki wasn’t so kind that he wouldn’t defend himself. In fact he was not kind at all. The moment Takumi leveled the revolver, Zerozaki reached into his cargo shorts and drew out three knives for each hand. He held them between his knuckles and crossed his chest. 

 

Takumi took a step back and leaned his weight on his back feet. He narrowed his gaze to level his aim. Before his finger could even flex on the trigger Zerozaki screamed. “Here’s the thing about guns, they make terrible close range weapons. Are you going to kill me on the first shot? If you don’t then I’ll get too close for you to fire. You have to take time to steadily aim, and then fire, and at that time I’ll be cutting your face off with a knife.” 

  
Takumi pulled the trigger, and the distraction made his aim veer slightly to the left. The bullet ripped through Zerozaki’s shoulder, but without hesitating, or even stopping to feel pain Zerozaki just kept running as he said he would.    
  


His knives were just a feint. He meant to draw Takumi’s attention to them. Zerozaki knew Takumi just couldn’t resist staring at them, they were shiny. He loved knifes. He loved sharp things. Conversely he hated dull things. He hated how numb he was to pain. He wanted Takumi to hurt him a little more if he was going to fight him. Zerozaki threw his arms back and raised his foot high into the air. He twisted his whole body along the axis of his knee, so his foot would collide with Takumi’s face at an impossible angle.    
  
Takumi threw his head back, and his knees out and watched the foot just miss his nose. The only reason he had been able to move in time was because he saw Zerozaki’s blow coming, like an image in the mirror. He backsprung off of his hand to get away from Zerozaki, and landed on his feet.    
  
He pulled the trigger of the revolver again and again to get Zerozaki to back off but they both knew at this point that he was just firing randomly. All Zerozaki needed to do was not be a sitting target.    
  
Takumi heard the empty click, and knew he had to reload. The exact moment Zerozaki had been waiting for. He lunged forward off the ground, and once again neglecting to use the knife in his right hand he instead slammed his fist straight into Takumi’s stomach. 

  
Takumi realized how weak he was in that moment.   
His body crumpled.   
So this is what it meant to be face to face with.    
A real killer.   
Not a copycat like him.    
  
Takumi hit the ground, and then raised his gun and fired. He no longer cared. He kept pulling the trigger even when he ran out of ammo. When he looked up Zerozaki was still standing. Oh. He must be wearing a kevlar vest. No wonder he wore that stupid flack jacket everywhere, and the long sleeved black undershirt that looked tighter than his own skin.    
  
Just one bullet caught in Zerozaki’s hand as he finally swung it back to use his knife. Takumi swore he could see it in slow motion, his skin twisting as the bullet entered, his fingers bending in the wrong direction, Zerozaki’s entire hand exploded. He took a moment to stare in shock at the damage at his hand, which was when Takumi moved.    
  
Takumi raised his gun in the air and attempted to strike Zerozaki in the butt. His shoulder, his hand, all of his damage from the previous fight with Munakata and this one was on his left side, so Zerozaki threw his mangled arm up to block the blow with. He needed sharper pain. He needed to feel relief.    
  
The butt of the gun bent his elbow out of shape. Takumi reached forward and stuck his hand in one of the pockets of Zerozaki’s cargo pants, and drew out a knife. He swung his whole body around with the momentum and aimed right for Zerozaki’s eyes. Zerozaki threw his shoulders back, and fell backwards to dodge it. 

 

Zerozaki aimed an upward strike at the hand that was still clinging to the gun. Takumi moved first, he stepped around the blow, and then tried to sidestep Zerozaki to get behind him. He turned the knife around in his hand and readied it for a stab.    
  
When he stabbed forward, Zerozaki effortlessly slapped his hand away knocking his hand up in the air. When he brought it down again, Zerozaki deflected the blow by aiming at the wrist rather than the blade of the knife.    
  
They were closer to one another than anyone else. Trying to touch the other. Trying to cut the other. Trying to make the other feel their pain.    
  
Zerozaki tripped Takumi.   
On his way down Takumi stuck his knife into Zerozaki’s leg, returning it to its owner.    
They both fell down.   
They both dragged the other down.   
They both fell on top of one another.

  
“Hey, did you really hate them?” Zerozaki asked.    
  
“Huh?”    
  
“Those kids you went to middle school with. Those law abiding citizens. Did you really think they deserved to die?”    
  
“They weren’t my friends. I don’t have friends in the first place, because I’m awkward and bad at sports.”    
  
“But, did you want them to die? You didn’t have the least bit of affection in your heart for your classmates? You didn’t feel a single thing for those law abiding citizens when they died right in front of you? It didn’t make you the least bit sad when you thought they’d never laugh again at some stupid joke.” 

 

“What does it matter what I think? They died!”    
  
“You don’t miss them? Your completely average parents who never really did anything wrong. You don’t miss anything at all about your life when you met the girl who killed your class?”   
  
“Shut up she’s my…”   
  
“Your.”    
  
Takumi looked around and saw Ikusaba Mukuro’s face appear on the screens around him. Zerozaki heard in the distance the faint rattling of chains. “She’s my family. She’s the one who made me into a killer.”   
  
“Really, because she seems to be from my family.”    
  
“Shut up! You can’t have her! You can’t have Shuuji, or Ikusaba or anybody! She made me! She can’t kill everybody, and then disappear and leave me behind like that! Shuuji can’t survive with me and then decides he doesn’t want me anymore. They’re… they’re my…”    
  
“You’re not her family, idiot. You’re just her victim.” 

 

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” Takumi knew if he felt even the smallest amount of sympathy in his heart for the children in his class that had died he would never stop crying. If he let himself feel afraid even for a second, he would never be able to go out into the outside world. He would spend his entire life afraid of dying, afraid of losing everything so suddenly just like when Ikusaba appeared and took it all away from him. “You know what your problem is? You’re not actually insane are you? You feel remorse when you kill, just a tiny bit, like blood trickling out of your body. And that’s why you hate yourself so much.”    
  
The worst thing for a child who has been beaten.   
Is to admit they’re being beaten.   
That’s why Takumi had to love murder no matter what.    
  
“You’re just too damn impressionable. When you’re around Munakata you started acting like you were a good kid. When you were around Ikusaba you started loving murder.”   
  
_ Because I.  _ _   
_ _ I.  _ _   
_ _ I.  _ _   
_ _ I know who I am but what good is it?  _   
Zerozaki wanted someone else to know who he was. Just one person. The truth is he had a friend in the past. That person was so close to Zerozaki he got scared, and to make sure he never got close to Zerozaki again he wiped out his whole middle school class.    
  
Until that day Zerozaki had been going to middle school every day, and then killing people for his family at night. He lived a double life attempting to fit in. He really should have known better. It’s not that he blamed himself, or cared when other people died. He just felt a little bit bad that those normal law abiding citizens had to die.    
  
People who are born in the dark like him, their eyes adjusted to the dark. They had to stay in the dark. But that was fine. Even if you were in the dark you could still see who you are. You could still feel the contours of your face, and guess at the shape of your form. You just needed at least one more person beside you. 

  
“You just gotta surround yourself with people.”   
  
“Who?”    
  
“Friends. You’ll be fine. Whackjobs, psychoes, nutcases, people like us are more common than you think.” 

  
🦔

 

Juzo and Munakata had fought each other to a standstill. There was no need to repeat this story, they were always fighting like this. I have no idea how they didn’t get bored of fighting. Can’t they just be friends already? 

Munakata stabbed his katana into the ground to help him stand. “I don’t get it. Why do you keep bothering with me?” 

Why won’t you give up on me?   
Even though Munakata himself had been trying so hard to cut the ties between them. The chains were much thicker and heavier than anything he could cut. 

Munakata thought all he wanted was to be alone. To be free of Chisa and Juzo. That their continued concern for him, that their feelings towards him, that they were too heavy of a burden to carry.    
  
But Juzo didn’t want to let go.   
He didn’t let go of anyone. The wounds that Munakata had left on his body were still fresh. The pain had sunken deeper than his skin. The marks left from his friendship. They were painful things, but he didn’t want to let go of them either.    
  
He was always trying to make it up to Munakata. He felt useless whenever he was around him. He was afraid he wasn’t good enough. He felt like Munakata would one day realize and throw him away. All of that had happened. He had already been through the worst of it, and that was why he was smiling.    
  
“You know man, even if you hate me now… that doesn’t mean I have to hate you.”    
  
There were times of him and Munakata standing together underneath the cherry blossoms. Times that Munakata softly apologized under his breath when the two of them had gone an entire day without speaking to each other after an argument. School was no longer a place he dreaded because he would meet Munakata there every day. He hated himself a little less, because Chisa and Munakata saw something in him he himself couldn’t see.    
  
He didn’t want Munakata to throw it all away just because it was painful. He didn’t want to be all alone just because he was afraid of being rejected. Munakata had hope, and Chisa had her class, but all Sakakura Juzo had ever cared about were his two closest friends in the whole world.

“Even if you abandon me.. I still…want you to live…”    
  
Those were his true feelings. The ones he had been so afraid of confess long ago. He wasn’t afraid of Munakata’s disgust, he was afraid that he might lose his place in the world if the fragile relationship between the three of them changed in any way.    
  
But.   
His feelings for Munakata and Chisa weren’t so fragile.   
That they could be destroyed that easily.   
Even the end of the world would not change the feelings in Juzo’s heart. He always thought of himself as a weak and unreliable person, but in that one aspect he was remarkably strong.    
  
“I’ve already been tossed out as trash. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, that’s what I decided. I just want you two. My friends…”    
  
Munakata quickly rushed to support Juzo when it looked like he might fall. He was carrying so much. He was so, so, heavy. Munakata was not sure how he was even still alive.    
  
Zerozaki stood up and held out his one remaining hand to Takumi. He just didn’t feel like killing him. Idiots like Takumi did not die even when they were killed.    
  
At that moment he felt something sticky in his back.   
He couldn’t believe it.   
It was just like a horror movie. He didn’t realize the stick sensation was blood until he touched it. 

  
He looked back and saw a paint knife had been stabbed into him from behind.     
Zerozaki smiled.   
  
“Yo ange. Decided to show your true self finally?”    
  
“You knew? You’re smarter than you look.”    
  
“Hey, I’m pretty smart. I have a middle school education.”    
  
She slowly drew the paint knife out of his back. Zerozaki fell forward. She splattered his blood all over like fresh paint. Then she didn’t even look at him. That was the worst part. She looked almost lonely.   
  
“Why?”    
  
“W-well you know. I always knew I was going to die in some alleyway some day after getting stabbed in the back.”    
  
No matter how many times Zerozaki tried to kill his older brother.   
His older brother never once tried to kill him.   
He said the moment he tried to, he would stop being an older brother.   
Zerozaki didn’t understand why.   
He didn’t understand something as simple as his brother’s affection for him.    
  
“Figured if I’m gonna die no matter what, might as well get stabbed by a pretty girl.”    
  
Hey brother.   
Is this how you felt?   
The feelings of an older brother.    
I think I understand now.   
I wish I hadn’t.   
Run away from.   
My own family.   
I wish you.   
Didn’t hit me so much.   
I wish we could get along better.    
  
“Nobody was ever gonna trust me, but I wanted to trust someone.” 

Zerozaki smiled at her.   
Angie ran away.   
Zerozaki collapsed.   
Oh well, he thought. 

Ikkun just watched.   
Creepy guy.

Ikkun would stand over him watching him until he died, but Zerozaki knew that after that Ikkun would just move on. He would just keep walking forward like he never saw the corpses at his feet in the first place. He would keep walking even without his shadow. That's the kind of lonely guy he was.   
  
He thought it was pretty stupid a guy like him suddenly talking about psychos making friends with one another. He thought it was a total riot.  _ Ikkun, if I die in front of you will you at least laugh at me?  _ It would be fun to see Ikkun’s calm expression cracking.

Who cares. Whatever. He was just kidding about all that. He didn't give a shit so he was fine.

Dying alone was fine.

"Well whatever…" he said gurgling blood in his mouth,  "Does it really matter, now?"

"Does it truly not matter?" Ikkun asked. He was suddenly sincere because Zerozaki was being insincere. "It matters to you, doesn't it?"   
  
Ga. Ha. Ha. Ha.    
  
Zerozaki laughed and then vomited blood.   
He waited for the storm to come and drown out the noise.    
He waited for the rain to come and wash him away. 

  
_ Sorry about that bro. _ _   
_ _ I guess you raised me wrong. _ _   
_ _ I really do suck at being a killer.  _ _   
  
_

 


	64. Autopsy of Jane Doe

She had already died that must be it. 

Nanami was a corpse and the worms wriggled underneath her skin consuming her. She felt a hell of pain having her body eaten by worms. Being corroded, plundered by living creatures inside of her body - the pain of being devoured alive, she felt that mixed with fear and disgust for her own sickness. 

Her death was certain she just didn’t know when. One more hour? One more day? Even if her body lasted that long she was sure her mind certainly wouldn’t. Nanami bit her tongue to stifle the scream of her impending death, trying to retain some dignity. She had been scraping at her own arms to mitigate the pain, but she forgot how sharp her nails were - when her skin tore and her blood started running, she started chewing off her nails on both hands. A filthy habit. She despised it. Sucking on her fingers. Like a child. A girl who never should have been born. 

She was a body stolen out of the ground. This wasn’t medical treatment, this was an autopsy. The worms that wriggled around in the dirt that she was buried in wanted their meal. The worms bit at her sparm. The worms melted her nerves. The worms nested em masse inside of Nanami’s body, the worms are the worms are the worms are the worms are the worms are the worms are the worms… 

She wasn’t going to scream. A monster screamed to scare others not because they were in pain. If she cried out for help she would be intensely disappointed with herself. She really could not endure this much pain? 

 

If she strained her ears she could almost hear the worms trilling, gnashing the teeth in their circular mouths, but that was impossible because there were no worms; this was just a hallucination. She was too smart, she couldn’t even lose her mind like a normal person. The worms slurping flesh and blood from her body, and scraping her bones. They cut holes with their sawlike teeth and then feasted on the marrow. To Nanami, this slow, continual torture of her illness was a part of herself, like her breath and her heartbeat. Her consciousness was… effervescent, as if she was not there. If she lost focus for even a moment she was only vaguely aware of the passage of time and the people around her. 

How many more times will I fight this sickness?  
How many more days will I live? 

She didn’t even want to live. If you extend a tragedy this far beyond the time the curtain falls it just becomes a farce. “Stop kidding me…” She mumbled. She was a child born only to die, and yet she couldn’t get the dying part right. I’ll save you. Matsuda said. In the end everyone keeps saying that. It’s devastating. That they all wanted to save her, and no one will kill her. She made herself into a monster so why did they all keep looking at her like she was just a child. 

Her own sickness mercilessly tore apart her flesh, and the advanced metabolism of her body fixed the damage, momentarily. Her vitality caused her to heal but that was it, it could not prevent her from taking any more damage or ease her sickness, it was simply healing the damage she took and preventing her from dying. The excruciating pain of her fever and her entire body inflamed still tormented her nerves every single minute. 

Her body died. She was reborn. She wanted to scream but wouldn’t let herself. Endlessly repeat a cycle of rupture and repair. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t scream. She was screaming. 

 

When Tsumiki Mikan went to investigate Nanami’s room, she had already known that she was a sickly girl. She didn’t just have the appearance of sickness, she was the very striking image of an ill girl. 

She was as thin as a thread, and gave the impression she would break at the slightest touch. She was the kind of girl a clumsy girl like Mikan was terrified to be around. Yet, her presence in the room wasn’t insubstantial, it was domineering, almost haughty. Nanami was nothing like her, Mikan told herself. The girl who looked exhausted from merely spending too long in the sunlight, was almost nothing alike to the overly energetic cheerful girl that Mikan knew, always running around, making a spectacle of things, destroying things carelessly. Yet they had the same closed off feel about them, that of a cloistered princess. 

There was a wall around her.  
Her presence there was a given.  
Her absence there was expected.  
Well, it doesn’t matter. 

Mikan who required constant attention couldn’t stand to be around such people, it made her agonizingly lonely to share the same space with them.

But.   
But.   
She could no longer avoid that aloof girl.   
That impossibly light girl, mysteriously eerily light. So light. As if she had no weight. Lighter than the air itself. More delicate than glass. That girl screamed and the room seemed to break into pieces. To shatter. 

Out of nowhere she began to have an attack. Mikan had to bite back the instinctual need to placate the pain that others felt that had been beaten into her since childhood, since nursing would activate the bracelet around her wrist. There was a hand slick with sweat, fingers so pale she was afraid that girl’s touch might slip right through her, currently locked around her wrist as well. 

Both of them were equally heavy shackles.   
“Please…” 

That girl looked so ashamed of herself to beg.   
Nanami stopped in disbelief for a moment like she wasn’t the one who said those words. 

 

“U-um, sorry.”   
Mikan had no idea what to say.   
She apologized on reflex. 

“P-please kill me.” 

“Sorry, I can’t do that.” 

“Y-you… can’t?” 

“I can’t do anything…” 

There were already tears in Mikan’s eyes.   
She knew she wasn’t the one who should be crying.  
She was not even the one in pain.  
However, as her eyes burned and the scenery burned around her she remembered a nostalgic memory, a boy with ghost-white skin who begged her to let him die. 

 

🧸

“Hey, why do you think people bully you, Tsumiki-senpai?” 

That jarring question asked to Tsumiki by Enoshima was completely at odds with the scene. The two of them were hidden in a medical supply closet, watching Komaeda in his sickbed through a crack in the door. Junko was wrapped around her, like she was Lilith whispering in Eve’s ear about how much more fun life was outside the garden. 

The lower half of her body was a snake.  
The children she gave birth to all died. 

Mikan’s femininity was just an apple in Enoshima’s hands, shared between both of their lips. 

“Y-you can’t just ask something like that.” 

“I can say whatever I want. That’s the privileges of a star. In fact do you know how lucky you are to be talking to me? I’m waving my usual appearance fee.” 

“Th-there’s a fee?!”  
“Why? Why? Why? Is it because you’re ugly? You’re stupid? You’re really fat especially around your hips? Why is everyone being so mean to my precious Tsumiki-senpa?” 

“Umm, you’re kind of being mean right now-” 

“No way. No way. If I were to praise you, you’d just feel unworthy of that praise. You’d be desperate to make it up to me in any way possible. That’s why, when I call you a useless pig and say I’d like nothing more than to stomp you into dust, but I won’t because I don’t want to get mud from your filthy body on my boots I’m actually being nice.” 

“Oh, uh… thank you.” 

“Man, you are so easy to insult you’ve even made insulting you boring. How is that even possible? Literally, my entire personality is this mean girl schtick. Ugh whatever, what were we talking about again? Oh we were talking about you. Ewe. Gross.” Enoshima Junko continued to buzz between topics like a radio with a particularly bad case of mania. “So yeah, the reason people bully you, that’s totally on you girl.” 

“I…”

“You’re sick. Sicker than you could ever possibly imagine. Maybe your parents made you that way. Maybe you were born sick. The point is other people can smell it on you, like seriously, damn! Take a shower!” 

“I bathe…” 

“Did you know there’s a chemical reaction in the brain related to motherly affection? Yeah, yeah, feelings aren’t real, all of this is just a bunch of molecules playing pinball, none of this is really happening whatever. I’m over it. But besides that…” Enoshima Junko’s smile was a bright sliver of the moon on a pitch black night. “Mothers are naturally supposed to love their children, but you’re so especially repugnant that she can’t stand the sight of you.” 

“Why are you saying all this all of a sudden? You were never like this before. You were always so sweet-” 

“I like you this way, Tsumiki-senpai. I’m probably the only person on earth who prefers the real you. I wish you’d stop pretending to be so fucking nice all the time. That ugliness you hide right beneath the surface, it has me squirming.” 

“You like me?”

“You remind me of me.” 

A narcissist.   
They fall in love with the image of themselves they see in others.  
Mikan was starving, desperate for even the vainest form of self love. 

 

The nurse. The nurse that was beating Komaeda right in front of their eyes.   
Why did Eve eat the apple?  
Did she need a reason?   
The apple in her mouth.  
It was so juicy.   
Mikan could feel herself salivating.   
She didn’t need true love’s kiss from her princess. She could just eat apples. 

You’re the only one who can understand me. You’re the only one who can love me. She didn’t see Enoshima Junko, she just saw a helplessly broken girl in need of nursing. She saw a girl who wanted to be rehabilitated. A classic case of nightingale syndrome. 

Enoshima Junko’s eyes red and shiny. Two red apples at the center of her eyes. “Do you know why…?” Junko asked again. Why? Why is it always me? A question Mikan asked herself as she curled herself into a ball to endure her mother and father. “It’s because he’s sick.” 

“He needs help…” 

“Did anybody ever help you? I. Told. You. To. Stop. Pretending. To. Be. Nice.” Enoshima’s words were pointed, like needles being driven into her. She had made Junko lose her patience. She needed to apologize to Junko. 

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s just sick.”

“You see everyone else as sick. You think they need you to attend to them, but that’s not true at all. You’re the sickest person here. In other words, ya basic. You’re just this gross, sweaty creature that exudes need, ewe, ewe, ewe don’t touch me.” Junko’s entire body trembled with genuine delight. Mikan wondered where she went wrong. She just wanted to feel a little bit of pleasure, she had grown tired of pain. “You spend your entire existence apologizing for others. Begging them for forgiveness. You make yourself as small as possible. Do you know why? Because they’re right about you.”

“I…”

“What’s inside of you is far worse than any bully that has ever stepped on you, ever kicked you. You really should be apologizing-”

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize. God, do you even listen to what I say?” 

“You just said.” 

“Anticipate what I’m going to say before I say it! It can’t be that hard!” 

Suddenly, Enoshima grabbed her face like it was something precious between her two hands. Her eyes were startlingly sincere. Mikan was sensitive to liars. Ever since she met, Mikan thought this girl was always wearing a mask around others. It was a strange sense of curiosity, or perhaps it was just temptation to pursue the forbidden. She wanted to see this girl naked just once, without any makeup.

“You don’t need to apologize to me.” 

A feeling that you’re the only one who understands them. 

“I’ll be the only one you never have to apologize to.”

The man beating Komaeda in the background of their conversation ceased. Junko turned Mikan’s head around and forced her to face it. “Komaeda-senpai doesn’t actually have memory problems. He can remember. He flinches every time that nurse gets near him. Do you know why he doesn’t tell anybody?” 

“Uh??”

“It’s because he forgives him. You’re not even mad that other people hit you, aren’t you Tsumiki-senpai? You’re just such a nice girl after all.”

“I don’t want him to hurt Komaeda-kun.”

“Bu-whaaaah? Did you like that, that’s my trademark shocked reaction. That’s not a thing a nice girl like you would do.” 

“Komaeda-kun will die, and he’s the only one… “

“Tsumiki…” 

“He noticed when I was hiding my bruises.” 

“Even if you stop pretending to be nice. I’ll still love you.” 

“Everyone else just pretends not to notice. For the sake of the ‘atmosphere’ or the ‘mood’ whatever.”   
Enoshima’s voice dropped low and dramatic, like she was reading lines off of some script. “Can you really remain on the side of forgiving others?” 

Do you really want to apologize to men like that?  
What made Mikan truly snap was the soft words that left Komaeda’s lips. Thank you for always taking care of me. No matter how much she tried to help others nobody so much as thanked Mikan, but a man like that who beat his own patients to relieve his frustrations. 

Junko was right.  
She was much uglier than she ever realized.   
Mikan saw her reflection in the pool of blood coming out of the Nurse’s head, as she stabbed him in the eyeballs over and over again. It was like seeing herself for the first time. Ah. No wonder her mother hated her. There was no way anyone could love a child with a face like that.

She had carried this person inside of her all along. However at that moment despite the fact that Enoshima had groped her chest, and then reached past her ribs into her own heart to squeeze as hard as she could Mikan had not entirely lost herself. 

She picked herself up off the ground. Her nurse uniform still bloody, she went to check on Komaeda. Mikan gave an uneasy smile. Mikan hated to smile, because, her smiling face was so ugly it certainly made others want to vomit. 

“It’s okay now… I…” Mikan searched for the words. “I’ll take care of you from now on.” 

She was unsure if Komaeda heard her words or not. Komaeda was there in the moment, and then he was not. He was killed by his bad luck, and then saved by his good luck. His good luck saved him from death, but he never got better. He did not even know what the word recovery meant. 

It was like his brain shut off for only a moment, and then right on the brink of death he was brought back and all of it, his spine, his nervous system, his lungs suddenly came back all at once, he remembered he could breathe and started to take desperate gasps of air. She could feel all of the millions of nerve cells arranged in a complex web around her body. 

Then that state of hypersensitivity gav way to pain. Pain had become everything to Komaeda. Whether the boy named Komaeda was feeling this pain, or the concept of pain had been stuck into the body of this trash called Komaeda, he could no longer tell the difference between the two. He felt none of that mattered anymore. What part of him hurt for what reason, why he had to experience this sort of torment - he had never known these causes and effects. 

 

 

It hurt to breathe. It hurt for his heart to beta. It hurt to think. It hurt to remember. There was nowhere to run, nothing that could be done It seemed like he had felt like this before, but he could not remember. Perhaps he had already given up on himself. 

He was like a corpse being eaten by worms. He had been picked so dry by this point that even the worms were starving. The worms were crying within his body. The worms were writhing his body in pain. They tore at Komaeda’s internal organs, ceaselessly struggling. 

The first thing Komaeda saw when brought again back to awareness was, a nurse dead on the ground, and his classmate Mikan soaked in that nurse’s blood. “Y-you, you’re rotten. How can you call yourself a nurse and kill somebody?”

“Komaeda-kun, I was just trying to help.”

“You’ve never helped anybody in your life. How did you trick them into thinking you were talented?” 

“Um, I…it was for you...”

“For me? I asked you to kill someone? You really think your actions are helping others? I’m a talentless waste of space who can’t possibly string a coherent sentence together but you’re far worse than me.” Now to Mikan, both Komaeda and Junko were saying the same things about her. “You killed Kuzuryuu-san too, didn’t you? You’re the reason that Saionji-san, Ibuki-san and the others all stopped getting along. They were all such good friends until they met you. Why… Why did you have to ruin everything? Did you really hate us all so much?” 

Why was she being blamed?   
She hadn’t hit him. She couldn’t stand the sight of him being hurt so she acted. Komaeda forgave the man who abused him over and over again, but now she had turned into such an unforgivable person. 

I don’t know. I don’t know. 

With a face just like Komaeda’s; with a voice just like Komaeda’s; why was this boy directing such cold words towars Mikan? Mikan was supposed to have saved him. She was supposed to have healed the sick and ailing patient right in front of her. Why was she being blamed? Who on earth was this boy. 

Mikan pointed to the corpse on the floor, losing what little coherence she had left. “That guy - it’s his fault.” Why had she killed someone? She was tired. So tired of forgiving. So tired of being forgiven. Tired. The world was like an uncontrollable dream. “If that man would just disappear, no misfortune would befall on anyone. Komaeda-kun, I thought you’d be happy…”

“How can I be happy? You say you’ll take care of me, and then you drop everything to go to that woman the moment she needs you. I’m your patient but you’re too busy trying to fix everyone else to pay attention to me.”

“W-what?”

“Please stop being kind to me. I’d prefer it if you killed me. Instead of that nurse, the incompetent me who is always causing trouble for others and can only give Matsuda-kun headaches should have died.” 

“I don’t… what are you talking about? That’s Matsuda-kun. That’s Matsuda-kun’s fault so please don’t blame me. It’s not my fault.” 

“Stop talking nonsense! I won’t let you speak badly about Matsuda-kun.” 

With a ghostly expression, Komaeda shouted. 

“You, what do you know about us? Someone who has never loved anyone before doesn’t know anything!” 

Ah.  
She heard the sound of scissors snipping. All of the bandages that were holding her together came loose all at once. 

I. I have someone I love. A person who smiles at me. The only one. That’s right… The only one. Even when I try to help everyone else is cruel to me. The only one who never hated me. She forgave my existence. She forgave me and accepted me. She gave me value. She loves me. If it’s for her sake I can do anything. Because I feel this way I have to forgive. No matter how many times I’m hit. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. I wanted to heal someone. I couldn’t be happy so I wanted to make at least one person happy. So being denied without any chance of explaining myself. GO TO HELL! You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying, she’s the only one, the only one who would never lie to me. 

“I… I… I love her…” 

She didn’t want to leave a lonely girl like that alone.   
For Mikan understood having nobody to love better than anybody else.   
That was why Mikan had to reciprocate her love. 

She closed her hands around that boy’s throat to crush it.   
Mikan was drooling so much the spit fell in long trails out of her lips. That boy's eyes. Grey, like a corpse with open eyes hours after death. The dead look in his eyes. The way he didn’t struggle even to breathe like he was trying to drown on purpose. It was so much like Junko’s, that Mikan mistakenly thought she had her hands around her beloved’s neck for a moment. 

“I love you, Enoshima…” 

This was her reciprocation.   
“I’m… such an embarrassingly shy girl…” 

The face of that boy approached closer and closer to death. Mikan’s insanity could only protect her so much, she realized that this was not some boy but instead Komaeda, the one she was trying to protect from a nurse abusing him. At last, Mikan realized that. Her fingers, her fingers that squirmed were just worms trying to devour Komaeda’s skin. 

“...Sorry.” 

At that instant, both hands loosened up and an apology slipped from her mouth. Before she could recover, arms wrapped around her neck. Enoshima Junko held her s softly, and said the words she had been waiting her entire life to hear.

“It’s okay, Mikan.” 

Is it?

“It’s going to be okay…” 

If you say so I’ll believe you. 

🧸

Nanami’s attack was over. She had returned to quietly breathing and taking up as little space in the room as possible. Matsuda slammed Mikan against the wall to vent his frustration as soon as he was done tirelessly fussing over Nanami. 

“You couldn’t tell anybody that Nanami was having an attack? I thought screaming like an idiot was the one thing you’re good for.” 

Emukae was in the room too, her arms crossed. “Matsuda-san, how does getting angry at Mikan help?” 

“You’re not helping her either by making excuses for her. She makes enough for herself.”

 

Mikan glanced nervously back and forth. She felt like her parents were getting a divorce. Which was a terrible feeling for Mikan, because instead of getting a divorce her parents took out what they hated about each other out on Mikan. 

“I can’t do anything…” Mikan whined again. 

“You’re right, you can’t do anything.” 

“Matsuda-san, there’s a difference between being a charming asshole and just being an asshole.” 

“Yeah, I get it. Because I don’t cry and whine like she does, I'm suddenly the asshole and you feel the need to defend her. Even though all I’m saying is the truth.” Matsuda whipped his head around. “What do you want me to do? Tell her it’s okay for her to make mistakes when other people’s lives are on the line? I thought she became a nurse to help people, not for the fucking self esteem boost.”

“N-no, that’s not why…” 

If only someone would let her speak. Mikan felt a frustrating inability to explain herself. She felt pity watching Komaeda struggling to express himself in front of others, but half of his brain was rotten. What was her excuse? 

“Is that what you want? You’re such a good girl, Mikan. I’ll pat you on the head. Hey. Stop crying. I’m praising you just like you want.” 

Mikan finally lost her patience. She pushed him over and they fell tangled up in each other. They were so close it was difficult to tell the difference between them. 

“Do you know what I want?” 

Mikan’s voice was hypnotic.

“I want to be more like you.” 

She looked wistfully at Emukae behind her. 

“Everyone I’ve ever loved… they just want you, not me.” 

They would choose Matsuda over her. If only she was smarter. If only she was more confident. She wanted to be a nurse rather than a doctor. She wanted to cut people apart rather than just bandage up their wounds.   
“Maybe I’m just better than you.” 

Matsuda said, grumbling as he climbed off of her.

A smile formed on Mikan’s lips. She could only call this feeling ‘emptiness’. “Haha, I guess you are.” 

Mikan was the first to walk away. Matsuda lingered in the room because he did not want to leave Nanami alone yet. Emukae looked as unattached from the situation as always. “You should really stop that, it’s not nice to tell lies. I know you like Mikan.” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“If you didn’t like her you’d just ignore her. You’re like a little playground bully.” 

“Hey, I may be a shut in with no social skills who does mad science in his basement but I’m not that cold of a guy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Name the other members of Class 77-B that aren’t Mikan or Komaeda.” 

“Umm, there’s uhh… the short guy. Uh, I think one of them has hamsters that he pulls out of his asshole-” Matsuda was completely unable to remember their names even though they were currently in the game with him. 

“You have such funny ways of showing you care. Seriously, I’m laughing.” Emukae laughed it off as always. “Well, I guess that’s normal for the guy who’s girlfriend gutted him like a fish.” 

“Well aren’t you devil may care?”

“Really? Do you think satan cares?”

“He certainly doesn’t!” 

Anyway. His attempt at conversing with Emukae was a failure as always. Matsuda was starting to believe the teacher that made a note in his permanent record that he was the type who didn’t get along well with others was right about him all along. 

He was surprised to see Nanami laughing softly. An hour ago she was dying. He was making a fool of himself in front of her. He really did want to be someone she could rely on, but all he ever did was act the fool. 

 

Ephemeral Nanami.   
The light danced in her translucent skin.   
Nothing seemed to touch her.   
He wished he could. 

N-not in a dirty way of course. 

“Stop staring at me, I already know what you’re thinking.” Nanami’s eyes were as sharp as ever. 

“You do?”

“You’re picturing me naked.” 

“I’m not! I’m a doctor and you’re my patient. I haven’t pictured what it’d be like to have you naked underneath my operating sheet at all.” 

“You’re not picturing me naked? How dare you? Don’t you think a body like mine deserves to be admired? Come on, just close your eyes and try it. I’m sure my beauty is far greater than anything you can possibly imagine.” 

“God, you’re impossible to please.”

“You can call me god if you want, but I prefer Nanami.” Nanami laughed softly. “The fact that I’m able to joke around this easily after nearly dying, is that a sign of sanity? Or is it a sign of insanity?” 

“Man, who even knows the difference anymore.” 

“You’re a very competent brain doctor I see.”

Matsuda had a special talent. He opened his mouth and immediately made himself look like an idiot. In fact he was considered especially flexible for how well he could bend his spine to insert his foot inside his own mouth. 

He wanted this girl to trust him. He wanted it more than he could possibly imagine ever wanting something before this point. She was not his mother. She was not Junko. The more time he spent with her the sharper her edges became, and the more distinct. He thought about her even when he closed his eyes. 

If only he was capable of talking with his real feelings in front of her. All he could do was hide behind his vulgar tongue, and his constant shouting. If he could speak his true feelings for a moment. If only that boy was not so afraid of other people. He didn’t want to be mean to Mikan. 

Mikan you were just a little kid weren’t you? You were just a kid when the whole world turned against you? All he wanted to do was be on their side. The world hurt Komaeda. The world hurt Mikan. He wouldn’t hurt them. People could heal. There was more to this world than just getting sicker and sicker. He wanted to help but he lost his patience and said such cruel things to them. 

Because.  
He was far sicker than anyone else here.  
He was the one who needed the most help. 

He was saved when a girl told him it was okay to cry. It’s okay, Matsuda. She said without judging or pitying him. It’ll be okay, Matsuda. Then why did he get so angry seeing Mikan’s tear stained face? Mother was always crying alone that’s why father… No. He wasn’t. He didn’t abandon anybody. 

Matsuda just couldn’t admit that he was a kind person. He was so kind he couldn’t stand the fact that he had said such cruel things to Mikan. So kind he didn’t want the girl in front of him to die. He was ashamed of that part of himself. He always hid it from others. Some would say he did a bad job of hiding. 

“You idiot, why do you want to die that badly?” 

Matsuda Yasuke cried from the bottom of his heart. Tears streaking down his face as he looked at Nanami. No matter how much he begged her, no matter how much he thought he got through to her, she kept begging to die. 

Nanami looked at the scene like it was unreal. Like she didn’t even know what it meant to cry. “I was fine with it…” She always said those same words. “Don’t you realize how much your kindness hurts me?”

“I… I saved you.” Matsuda hated the way his voice sounded. He was begging now, just like Mikan. “I just wanted to save you! You really wanted to die that badly? Everyone. Hinata. Mom. Komaeda. Everyone. They just die and leave me all alone." 

He remembered Hinata’s hands touching his body. The way he begged over and over again. Kill me. Those hands dragging across his body left permanent scars. Suddenly, he realized he was looking at a corpse. The corpse of Hajime Hinata at his feet. 

“Hi…” 

Matsuda suddenly gasped.

“Hinata…?” 

The corpse half rotted with worms crawling around in his flesh. The corpse of the boy he killed. His eyes were open in death staring accusingly at his murderer. Matsuda was completely still. He didn’t look away. He didn’t try to run from the corpse. His brain was frozen, and he just stopped. 

He was angry. He was angry at Mikan for thinking that she could help people. Her help didn’t help anybody. 

He stood up and tripped over the sandal that’s only half on his foot. His head slammed into the ground, and he can already see blood starting to pool on the ground. He had no idea whose blood it was, his, or Hinata’s. 

He spasmed like a seizure patient.

I’m sorry. 

Ryoko. Ryoko. Ryoko. He strangled Ryoko. He just wanted it to end. He wrapped his hands around her neck. So, why did it feel like he was the one who was choking? 

I’m sorry. 

The brainstem is detached. Unable to maintain basic respiratory functions, the body begins to shut down. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I apologized so why won’t you forgive me? He clawed at his throat. He tried to fight back and remove the dead hands that were closing around it. 

“Are you really the doctor here?” 

Nanami remarked unimpressed. 

He can only barely hear her bored sounding voice. Don’t get bored of me. Please. 

“Your face is starting to turn red. Don’t tell me, you’ve really fallen for me?” 

Yasuke bruised himself as he tried to pick himself up off the ground. He’s as sick looking as Nanami. He can no longer tell if he’s sweating or crying, probably both. He feels like, something is pounding against his head. Relentlessly. It won’t stop. He’s being beaten. All he can do is curl up into a ball. I’m sorry mother. I won’t ask for anything anymore.   
Nanami's whisper of a voice called out to him. 

“You.”

Say my name.

“Really, you…”

Please, say my name. 

He was so scared of being forgotten about. The woman who was supposed to love him and take care of him forgot him. 

“Matsuda-kun, breathe.” 

Nanami was upon him, on the ground.   
Nanami’s lips over his. She forced him into inhale carbon dioxide into his lungs, over and over again until his brain begins to grow so weak from oxygen it can no longer send his entire body into panic. 

“You’re…” When Matsuda regained enough of himself to wipe the tears out of his eyes, it was all he could think of to ask. “You’re not bored of me…?” 

“No.”

“You won’t tell anybody that I cried?”

“No.”

“You won’t pity me?” 

“Why would I feel sympathy for someone like you?” Nanami replied. 

Nanami’s small body curled in his lap. Her head rested against his chest. She looked at everything like it was the same, living or dead, it made no difference to her. So, why right now did she feel so comforted by the sound of his heartbeat? 

“Which one of us is taking care of the other, again?” 

A man who brought back corpses from the dead.  
And a corpse bride.  
Neither of them knew the first thing about living.


	65. The Bride of Frankenstein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening is a quote from Frankenstein.

"I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. ”

🦔  
  


Sometimes, a broken machine did not simply and silently gave up functioning. On rare occasions, it could surprisingly continue working. The fact that Matsuda was able to crawl out of the bottom of the old school building even though a knife had been inserted just beneath his heart, and then ripped out so gravity would drain all the blood from his still-beating heart was one of these very rare examples.  
  
When receiving traumatic injuries it’s not always the injury itself that kills you, or even bleeding out, but rather the shock that the system goes into itself. Matsuda’s body had been in a perilous state. Had he not been knocked unconscious and forced his brain to calm down, he might have died right then and there. He wondered why Junko spared him, was it just another whim, or was she just teasing him.  
  
Even so, Matsuda stood up from the ground of the basement, and escaped the old school building. He blended into the protesting reserve course student by changing out of his uniform into an extra of Kamukura’s that he found hanging in his closet. Nobody was looking for him anyway. Apparently after yesterday the steering committee had marked his official status as dead rather than expelled. How could he sleep all night at such a dangerous time? He had given Junko a head start of half a day while he had been recovering from his injury. He had no idea how long it would take to catch up to her now. 

Under the cover of night, his black uniform jacket, and the black circles under his eyes made him almost indistinguishable from the background. He was close to collapsing as he snuck his way back to the biology lab. He had a strange feeling in his chest that he had survived the worst. This feeling, was it called hope? He still had a chance to make a miracle happen. Junko didn’t kill him after all.  
  
He had long forgotten what time it was. Every time he looked at a clock the numbers seemed to read differently, just jumbles of symbols, his brain was probably suffering from the deoxygenation caused by rapid blood loss. He couldn’t even recall properly how he had survived Junko stabbing him, or how that scene resolved, or what her last words to him were. His heavily damaged body could fall down at any minute, and even his psyche had been eroded to its limits. Only the conviction of ‘save her’ enabled Matsuda to force himself to make it this far. 

This time. This time. This time. This is my chance to protect her. Standing before a familiar stairwell full of a clinical hospital-like scent, he finished descending the stairways to the neurology lab down below. He might have fallen a couple of times as he rushed down the stairs. Oh well. 

Just like he had expected; no one hindered his movements. He had already been written off as dead. For matsuda their lay an opportunity, there was a chance that couldn’t be missed. This time he would protect her. This school had admitted defeat before Matsuda. Matsuda had defeated this school and protected her finally. He was finally able to pay her back for when they were younger.  
  
So this time, he would rescue that childhood friend of his, and run away with her. He had no idea whether he was walking, or crawling, or even rolling down the stairs, but eventually he made it to the bottom floor. 

He made it to a room with a white bed. She was there lying on the bed helplessly, waiting for him like always. Otonashi Ryoko. No. That wasn’t possible. Otonashi Ryoko never existed. She was just the memory-less Enoshima Junko. She was never a separate entity from the girl. 

There was Enoshima Junko who didn’t love him. And Otonashi who loved him, but who he couldn’t stand.  
  
But this was fine wasn’t it? 

Somehow Junko had lost all of her memories and turned into Ryoko again.  It all seemed easy and convenient like a dream. 

Ryoko stirred in her sleep and woke up. Her forgetful and empty eyes, always forgetful, focused on Matsuda who had approached her.  
  
“Matsuda-kun…?” 

 _All I have to do is ask her to come to America with me._ _  
__She’s already forgotten that I strangled her._ _  
__She’s already forgotten about Enoshima Junko._ _  
__All I need to do is tell her that I’m Matsuda-kun, and she’ll love me._ _  
__  
_But then why, was he hesitating?

“Ryoko. I. Have been lying to you all along.” 

All he had to tell her was that he loved her, and she would be his. But, what came out of his mouth was a confession of the truth instead.  
  
“Ther’es a person who is more important to me than anyone else. I approached you… because I wanted to meet that person again.”  
  
 _What?_ _  
__Why am I telling her all this?_

“I didn’t want her to get involved with anyone else. So I erased all of her memories. I didn’t do it for you, or to be with you. Those were all lies.” 

You never confessed this.  
Shut up.

“I did it all. For myself. Everything I did. Was because. I never wanted to be abandoned again.” 

  
“Matsuda-kun, why are you telling me all of this?” Ryoko’s eyes filled with tears. Her red eyes looked bloodshot. “E-even if you tell me all of this I’ll forget later so.”  
  
“Even if you keep forgetting. I’ll confess to you again and again. I’ll tell you I’m the one responsible for your memory loss.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun… It’s scary. I love you, but…I had no idea why I loved you. It’s weird. In spite of the pain of knowing what you really think of me, I feel… like I finally understand.”  
  
Ryoko reached out both of her hands and touched his face. She stared for a long time, as if to carve onto her retinas the image of his face that she never wanted to forget. 

“Matsuda-kun, you won’t let go of my hand will you? I feel like that’s the type of person you are. You won’t let go because you’re a hopelessly lonely person.” Her thumb and forefinger carefully tried to wipe the tears from the corner of his eye. That’s right all he wanted was someone who wouldn’t hit him when he cried. I’m sorry mother. I won’t cry anymore. I won’t ask for anything. I’ll keep quiet. She touched is face in a way that made him remember that soft, comforting touches existed. He had thought there was only harshness in the world for so long. “I can’t help but love a person like that.”  
  
You weren’t the one who confessed.  
You weren’t the one who Ryoko accepted.  
Shut up.  
You remember it now. You stumbled upon a scene of confession. Kumagawa broke into tears and admitted that he had been lying to Ryoko the entire time, he knew exactly who she was, and she forgave him. She accepted him. The boy who had been lying to her all along, pretending to know nothing about Matsuda who was stealing her memories away. Pretending to be helping her when he was really just victimizing her all along. You saw that and were reminded what a petty person you were.  
SHUT UP.

This isn't what really happened.  None of this is real. Do you really think you deserved a happy ending like this after everything you did?

  
He confessed to her. He took her hand. He told her _you don’t need to despair anymore, you don’t need to give up anything anymore. You don’t have to say this has nothing to with me. Because you’re… Everything to me. You don’t need to forget anymore. Your lost memories won’t ever come back again, but that’s fine. Let’s make lots of new memories to replace all of your old memories._  
  
He took Ryoko’s hand and left the biology building, and they escaped from the school grounds at night. Mukuro had been waiting for him all along. The two sisters were reunited in a memorable courtyard. Matsuda would take all three of them and go travelling, he would use his connections to the ER3 in America to disappear somewhere where Hope’s Peak could not touch him. Ryoko didn't need her memories from the past. All she needed was Matsuda, and he could be there for her since he chose her over Junko. 

Mukuro told Matsuda she was happy her sister had changed. They were like a normal family now. None of them knew what it was like to have a family, but between the three of them they were trying their best.  Matsuda told her he just wanted to see those two sisters get along. Mukuro asked if she could call him big brother. Matsuda was shocked. He laughed and cried at the same time, and took his younger sister and beloved wife into a soft embrace. I lost my family, but I found this one. He wasn’t alone anymore. Therefore, there was nothing to regret about. It was worth it, risking his life to protect her There would be rewards for all the pain he had suffered, and everything he wanted to protect still lay within his hands-

What about Kamukura?  
You framed him for the murders you committed and handed him over to the steering committee.  
What about Komaeda?  
He’s probably died in his hospital bed already. He was never going to get better, you knew this from the start.  
What about Kumagawa?   
He had nothing to do with this story. He was forgotten. That’s what happens to people who aren’t useful, they get thrown out.

Just forget about all of them I guess, and keep dreaming.

  
Nanami stared at the corpse of a man before her, muttering things to himself in his sleep, and wearing a self satisfied smile. How odd. What reason did he of all people have to smile?  
  


When he woke up, he didn’t explain his dream to her. With a worried expression on his face, he asked Nanami again. “You won’t get bored of me, will you?” His voice wavered. “Am I boring you?” 

 

“Quit asking me that. You’re the one who’s going to leave me first.”  
  
He really hated the way her eyes stared at him. She looked at him like she already knew everything about him. Smug bitch. He always hated Junko’s eyes too. If she knew everything, if she knew what he was hiding, then she would hate him. 

  
“All I want to do is save you? Why don’t you believe me? How many times do I have to argue with you until you’ll trust me enough to let you help.” 

“You really are acting like you don’t have a pattern when it comes to people.” Nanami averted her eyes like she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Like she was looking at something especially unpleasant to the eyes like roadkill. She made a face like she had inhaled a foul smell. “You get involved with people. You help them without even asking them if they want your help. Then you make their problems all about yourself. You expect to be rewarded for this. You see your life as a simple narrative  and straightforward where a boy saves a girl and does everything purely for her sake. When you realize you’re not getting what you wanted out of them, you cut off all ties with them and ditch them.” 

  
Like Kamukura who Matsuda gave every talent in the world too, and then abandoned to the hope’s peak scientists because he could not stomach the guilt of being around him.  
Like Komaeda who he promised to treat but then threw away a moment he became a danger to the Kamukura project.  
Like Ryoko, he cut off of her memories and made her depend entirely on him, only to try to strangle her to death in the end.  
  
“You were just trying to help them? You only ever helped yourself. I’m nothing more than a distraction to you. Tending to me gives you a good excuse not to speak to Kamukura, or face Medaka-chan. In the end you’ll realize I’m not worth the trouble and abandon me too. If I had to choose a metaphor you’re like a hopeless woman who falls in love with people to fix them, who sees them not as people but as their personal projects.”  
  
“You’re really fucked in the head, you know that? Not everybody is as sick as you are.”  
  
“Hmm, maybe not. I haven’t met a lot of people so I wouldn’t know. But you definitely are.”

  
“I’m the worst bastard I’ve ever met. I know that but… I want to change. When I met you I wanted to grow up a little bit and take responsibility for the first time in my life.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Did you ever really love Enoshima Junko?”  
  
“...Don’t ask me that.”  
  
“You’ve lost your parents, but as long as you have her you haven’t lost everything have you?” 

Matsuda tried to interrupt but her gentle voice spoke over me. 

 “But you don’t have her, do you? You lost her. Think about it, the girl you knew for your entire life left you for someone else. You should be heartbroken, you should be devastated, but you’re not.”

“Really? You could have fooled me? I thought all I ever did was sit around complaining about my crappy love life.”  
  


“It’s because to you she hasn’t even left you. You’re still waiting for her to take you back. You lay in my lap for comfort while thinking of her."

Nanami, as if to say.  
 _You’re the sick one, not me._  
  
“Oi, she’s the one who shoved her hand up my ass.  Dont blame me for acting like her puppet. And Hey, I didn’t want to become like that. It’s difficult for those with brain damage to conceptualize change. You threw a goddamn ice pick into my eye. How the hell am I supposed to act when someone scraped the inside of my brain?”  
  
“I didn’t hit your eye.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I didn’t hit your eye. I purposefully missed. Matsuda, I only pluck out weeds so flowers can grow. I wouldn’t kill you. You’re not a flower or a weed, you’re Matsuda. You’re someone far too annoying and belligerent to ignore.”  
  
“Really, because I’ve wanted to become a plant my entire life just so I can stop thinking about how much I hate myself for five minutes.”  
  
“Stop giving sassy retorts to everything. People will start to think we get along. Undo the bandages around your eye.”

Matsuda did with slow horror. He pulled them off only to find with his eye underneath completely unharmed. That was right she threw the ice pick but the butt end of the pick hit his head. The narrative lied. She lied to him. No, Kamukura had told him again and again there was nothing wrong with him. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you, except what was already wrong with you to begin with.”

Wrong.  
You’ve been wrong from the beginning.  
Merely acting like you were in the right.  
You haven’t changed.  
You still do everything based around what she thinks. He never even let them get close. He abandoned them before he was abandoned.  
  
“This is why I hate talking with you and Junko, everything is a goddamn lecture.”  
  
“Matsuda, don’t look at me like a girl I don’t even know. It’s lonely. It’s a lonely thing.” Nanami who never displayed her true feelings on her face (as if she were unaware of what those feelings really were) looked unbearably sad. The fact that Matsuda felt like he had made that girl cry, rattled every last nerve he had. “You keep making me all these promises, but I know you’re not talking to me, you’re talking to her.” 

Every doctor she met before this was a quack. She saw Matsuda as exactly that, a phony. A person not interested in helping her. A person only interested in herself. Matsuda wasn’t mad at her.  
  
He thought it was incredibly sad that she would never accept anyone’s help. That was all he could think. 

 

🦔

 

 _All you care about is what she thinks._  
  
Matsuda paced back and forth. The pain from those words lingered and stung him worse than any wound, or scar on his body. She may as well have carved them into her arms. The worst part was. The worst part was. All he did was get offended at her accusation.  
  
He knew Nanami had been taken advantage of by quack doctors in the past. This was her exact trauma. She couldn’t trust others. Every doctor who tried to treat her gave up on her and blamed her. Some of them even tried to kill her. He should have thought about how lonely it was for her being unable to trust others, but all he did was defend his own hurt feelings.  
  
Ryoko was gone. Junko had left him for someone else.  
He had lost the person he wanted to protect long ago, yet why was it he couldn’t stop?  
Borrowing the name of someone who had already burned him, and clinging to the ash that remains.  
 _All you care about is what she thinks._  
Of course.  
 _That’s the only way for me to exist._  
  
He pretended to be the only sane one, while his mind was in turmoil the entire time. He was sicker than anyone else.  
  
Nanami.  
I want to destroy you.  
I want to save you.  
I can’t forgive you.  
Which is my real feeling?  
  
He couldn’t tell anymore. Who was it that he wanted to protect? Who was it he wanted to destroy? He thought he could protect Hinata. He destroyed him. He wanted to destroy Enoshima Junko. He protected her. His shaking hands, and his white lab coat, both of them were becoming steeped in a bright pink. Dirty. Dirty. Dirty. No wonder Nanami didn’t want him to touch her. His hands were filthy with hypocrisy. 

It was obvious. There was no longer anything inside Matsuda. It was impossible for there to be anything inside him now. He was just like Nanami, somehow living on when he was supposed to have died. He had been continuing on like a mechanical doll. 

Sick in the exact same way she was. No wonder his mother tried to smother him. No wonder her mother tried to smother her.  
  
He had been paying so little attention to his surroundings he had walked straight into Emukae. He knocked over the nailpolish bottle she was using to paint her nails with. It shattered on the floor. The color made it look like a pool of blood.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“I thought I’d start painting my nails red to look more like Junko. Then Matsuda-san will love me for sure.”  
  
“You make me sound like the shallowest guy on the planet.” 

“Gosh everyone gets so mad at me for being honest. This is why I tell lies. Maybe I should start wearing a blonde wig. Oh, I know I could cut her face off and wear it over mine.”  
  
“Why the fuck do I keep talking to you when you casually say fucked up shit to my face?”  
  
“Face it you have a type.”  
  
“I don’t want to. I’d like to go the rest of my life living in denial thanks.”

"You came to consult with the one they call the goddess of love."

"Nobody calls you that. They call you a fucking psycho."  
  
Matsuda noticed Emukae was wearing makeup too. Enough makeup that she almost looked alive. A little bit of color had returned to her face and the cracks and wrinkles in her expression was gone. “So, what did you two fight about?”

“She’s so frustrating. Do you know what it’s like being around someone so determined to not take care of themselves they get angry at you for being concerned for them?”  
  
“Hey Matsuda-san, when’s the last time you slept?”  
  
“Fuck you, that’s when.” Matsuda sighed. “Do you know what it’s like to be around someone who has to complain about every last thing? She’s the most ungrateful woman on earth.”  
  
“No, I have no idea what that’s like.” Even though Matsuda had been doing nothing but coming to complain to her recently. You think you have problems, try being dead! 

Sometimes people fought all the time because they were too similar. They rubbed against each other in the wrong way. It wasn’t a strict doctor patient relationship, it was two sick people trying to care about each other. 

“She’s not Junko…” Matsuda finally said in a quiet voice.  
  
“I know. She’s far less annoying. I don’t want to stab her, even a little bit.” 

“I… I don’t give a shit about anybody but Junko. I just keep crawling back to her. Even though there are people that love me, and try to be good to me, it means nothing to me.” 

 _I can’t love anybody._  
  
Emukae’s face was dead. Which meant her lacrimal glands were no longer functioning. She couldn’t cry. She didn’t actually breathe. Matsuda noticed because he was a doctor and looked at people with a surgeon’s eyes. Her shoulders did not rise and fall, she could speak really fast for long periods of time because unlike everyone else she didn’t have to stop to take breaths in between words. She never sweated, and never blushed because she had no blood running through her veins.  
  
Yet, somehow in that moment she looked more alive than he did. More alive than anyone else.  
  
“Hey, Matsuda-san, what’s wrong with that?”  
  
“Everything? Literally, everything is wrong with me.” 

“Those are your feelings aren’t they? You love her. Loving someone else, having someone to love, it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. It’s a wonderful thing.” Emukae blowed on her nails to try to get them to dry faster. “What if every single thing Nanamin accused you of is true? So what? You’re never going to be able to love anybody the same way you love Enoshima-san. Of course not. She’s someone you spent fifteen years of your life with, you’re not going to feel the same way about someone you met two weeks ago.”  
  
“That’s not… okay. That is not how a normal person acts.”  
  
“It’s fine, it’s fine. You have an irreplaceable first love. You can’t forget about her. Then, stop trying to replace her, stop trying to forget. You can still love someone else. There are as many flavors of love as there are ice cream flavors…”  
  
Kaiki told him.  
He couldn’t love her anymore. He was no good for her.  
Emukae was so strange, but she was free. Free to love, free to lose that love.  
  
“Isn’t that a good thing that Enoshima-san moved on from you? That means, you can move on from her too. Onto your second love, before I kill her and marry you instead.”  
  
“You had me for a second there, until that last part.”  
  
“Please, don’t say you can’t love others. Matsuda-san you’re… a boy with a lot of love to give. You always have been. Ever since I first met you. I even thought you might love someone like me.” 

Matsuda felt like that girl who was always telling lies was finally being honest with him. That was why the question slipped out before he could even think to shut his mouth. “Why do you like Mikan so much?” 

  
“She’s an antidote.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“It makes me happy to think good people like her exist.” Emukae suddenly looked like the shy girl always hiding behind Kumagawa’s arm she was when they met for the first time, as if nothing had changed between then and now, “I feel the same way about you, too.”  
  
A lovesick girl.  
There was no curing her.  
That was Matsuda’s diagnosis as a doctor. 

 

🦔

 

“Don’t you think it’s time you stopped playing the victim?” 

  
Emukae, a rotten flower.  
Nanami, a wilted flower tragically clinging to life.  
Slowly, petals kept falling away from her.  
It was all very beautiful and tragic.  
Emukae just smelled foul.  
  
“Stop wilting like a tragic flower. It’s annoying.”  
  
Her voice was chilling. Even Nanami who when she was not feverish had a body temperature barely above that of a corpse could feel a chill.  
  
“Hm? I heard a noise. It’s like a fly buzzing in the air.”  
  
“You’re the exact opposite of Matsuda-san’s type. He goes for vain, shallow, princessy types.”  
  
“Isn’t that what I am? A cloistered princess tragically clinging to life? Always begging with my eyes, help me, help me.”  
  
“No, you’re not like that at all. Unlike Matsuda-san and Mikan and I don’t have a tragic backstory associated with Enoshima. I’m not suddenly going to have a flashback about her in the middle of conversation, that’s why I can say-” Emikae tilted her head. One thread of the stitching that was keeping her head tied to her neck came loose. “You’re different. It’s like. She’s the younger sister type, and you’re the older sister. She expects everybody to spoil her. But you, you can’t stand it. You’re a caretaker so you won’t let anyone else ever pity you.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“Even the way you talk to other people is different. You both talk to everybody like they’re idiots, true, but Enoshima just wants to rub it in your face how smart she is. You, it’s more like you’re scolding a child.” 

“My brother was always such an idiot. Neither of our parents bothered with him so I was the only one left to raise him.”  
  
“You’re not cruel and vain at all, are you?”  
  
“There goes that buzzing again.”  
  
“Pretending to be the victim like that is supposed to be my thing. It’s really annoying when other people do it. You’re not some cruel villain either. You think you’re so much smarter than other people, don’t you? You think you have them fooled. But even an idiot like me has you figured out.” 

  
“If you have all of that figured out about me, then you’re not the cruel psychopath lacking any empathy you pretend to be either?”  
  
“Of course not.”

They suffered from the same symptoms. They could spot it in each other. Even from a thousand miles away, Nanami would be able to see Emukae coming, and Emukae could see Nanami.  
  
A monster who wanted to become a normal girl.  
A normal girl who wanted to become a monster.  
  
“Well, whatever. Just so you know both of your parents are dead. Nobody’s locking you in that room anymore. No one here’s telling you to die, or that you’re better off dead. At this point, you’re locking yourself in that room to protect yourself. But keep playing the victim, see if I care.”  
  


Nanami was the monster not the victim. She had never pitied herself once. She acted like the monster she knew she was. She didn’t regard herself like a tragic flower wilting. Even though she was born and raised in a garden, even though she knew her life had a set expiration date she never pitied herself for it.  
  
She was going to die right from the start.  
So what was wrong with wanting to die?  
What was wrong with wanting to control the way she died at least?  
Of course she had a fatalistic mindset. She was infected with a fatal sickness. Life was fatal for her. She had no choice but to become what she was. Of course she acted like a girl locked away in her room, that was her entire life. Her entire life was contained in one garden.  
  
How dare Emukae criticize her. You think I want this? You think I want to be sick? You think I asked for this? Don’t tell me what I’m feeling. But I thought you didn’t have feelings. I thought you were a monster. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

Just when Nanami thought she might lose herself again, there Matsuda was.  
  
“Nanami, can I touch your hair?”  
  
She had.  
Something like germaphobia.  
Other people were sick. 

“Okay. I won’t touch you again without permission.”  
  
“Saying that after you’ve already had your way with me…”  
  
“Aren’t you being a little too self-conscious? You can’t just treat everyone you meet like they’re out to get you. Most people don’t really care about you that much to victimize you, trust me.”  
  
“Hmph. Some things are just too much to say, even though they’re true.”  
  
“Wait, you were aware of it this entire time?”  
  


Matsuda pulled out a cigarette and chewed on it to relieve his frustration.  
  
“Don’t smoke in front of me.”  
  
“Oh, it probably sets off your asthma, right?”  
  
“No, smoke’s no good for the baby.”  
  
“Who’s the father!”  
  
“I’m your father.”  
  
“That’s not true! That’s impossible!” Damnit, Matsuda got roped into fooling around with her again. There were uncomfortable feelings in the air that neither of them were addressing. They didn’t know how to communicate their feelings. They didn't know how to convey them. They didn’t know how to convey them in a way that made other people stay. “Wait, what the fuck are we even talking about!?” 

 

Matsuda crumpled up the cigarette in his fingers.  
  
“Nanami, let me show you the world outside of this hospital room. Let’s find Medaka-chan. You’re still worried about that girl aren’t you? That’s the kind of person you are, you’re a worrisome older sister.”  
  
Matsuda said something unbelievably foolish to her again.  
  
“Are you going to help her? Just like you’ve helped everybody else? Just like you’ve helped me?”   
  
“Iwanaga.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“You’re always talking about flowers. If you know about the kuebiko, then you also know about the Princess Iwanaga.”  
  
“Yes, from the Kojiki.”  
  
Princess Iwanaga.  
The older sister of Princess Konohana-no-Sakuya.  
You’re an older sister type, Emukae told her.  
They were both given in marraige to Ninigi-no-Mikoto, descendant of the high god. But Ninigi-no-Mikoto only married Princess Konohana-no-Sakuya. And sent Princess Iwanaga back home. That enraged their father, Oyamatsumi. Just as the “iwa” or “rock” in Princess Iwanaga’s name suggests, she was able to give life as eternal as rocks that never change month to month, year after year. But because Ninigi-no-Mikoto didn’t marry her and returned to her father, he and his progeny were granted short lives that scattered like flowers on trees. They became mortal.  
  
She recited the story from memory.  
  
“Then you get it, don’t you? I’m a doctor. My goal is to steal my patients from death and make them immortal. And no matter how much you want to die, I won't let you. So I don’t belong with Princess Konohana-no-Sakuya. I need princess Iwanaga.”  
  
He really did love her.  
Enoshima Junko the girl who threatened to fall and scatter any moment like a flower.  
He wanted to protect her.  
It was a beautiful love.  
But, that love wasn’t healthy. 

  
Nanami’s eyes narrowed.  
  
“I’m sure you thought that was smooth, but you know why Princess Iwanaga was returned home, don’t you?”  
  
“Oi? What’s bitten your ass? I’m trying to be nice for once in my life. Let’s not worry about the minor details.”  
  
“It’s not minor at all. Princess Iwanaga was sent home because she was ugly! You couldn’t have used a worse metaphor for a girl! Have you ever thought before speaking once in your entire life!”  
  
He didn’t think that girl had any pride left to insult. Matsuda simply walked to the window. He opened it. He felt like he should have done that a long time ago. Let the outside air touch her skin. As he did, the cherry trees that were growing outside the first floor of the hospital seemed to reach inside. Their petals were blown in by the change in the wind.  
  
Matsuda didn’t even look at the flowers.  
Didn’t even see them.  
He saw a girl and not a flower.  
  
“But you’re prettier than any flower, so I haven’t sent you back anywhere.”  
  
Skin as white as snow.  
It turned the faintest shade of red.  
She looked as if she had been kissed. 

  
  



	66. Jolly Jane

It was a scene standard in any horror flick. 

A girl running away from a monster, through the halls of an abandoned hospital no less. Did you know? Most horror movie tropes are common knowledge by now. Even a clueless robot like me knows them. In slasher horror the girl who makes it to the end is referred to as the final girl. She’s the most innocent character, usually a virgin, pure in some way, but even if she lives by the end of the movie her innocence is violated, ruined in some way by the encounter with the monster. 

Tsumiki was not innocent in any way, and she had stopped being a virgin a long time ago. She was pretty much doomed in my opinion. If this were survival horror like a resident evil game she could just shoot over her shoulder and blow the monster’s brains out. As it is the only option she had was to run away.  
  
Her pursuer got too close and grabbed her by the hair. Mikan could feel it tearing at her scalp. She imagined the flesh of her scalp slowly ripping away revealing the bone underneath. What a gruesome imagination. It wasn’t something she imagined so much as a memory. She remembered an incision into Hinata’s forehead, the sinewy flesh tearing, and a circular bone saw applied directly to his skull. She wondered if this pain in her head was punishment for back then. Mikan tore away from the hand that grabbed her, tearing an entire clump of her hair out.  
  
Mikan did not flinch and kept running away as she made her escape. She was used to getting her hair pulled. Your hair is just like your mother’s. Your body is the only good thing about you. Rip. Don’t think about that, just keep running. Please rate the pain you’re experiencing right now on a scale of one to ten. It was not a matter of not feeling pain, but rather just distracting yourself from that feeling. 

Mikan thought she was going to break away when she stepped on something (the bandages that were wrapped around her lower leg coming loose) and bent her ankle in the wrong direction. She really was useless, and always at the worst time. The side of her head, her face, her elbow, her ribs, she bumped all of them as she crashed onto the floor.  
  
Mikan still tried to crawl away but she noticed the monster who had been chasing her from behind, was now in front of her.  
  
That monster was actually just a teenage girl.  
Which if you think about it is the worst, most terrifying kind of monster of all.  
  
“K-k-kurokami-san, you’re acting kind of scary.”  
  
Medaka Kurokami smiled. “You’re scared of everything, Tsumiki-senpai.”

“That’s besides the point.” Tsumiki gave an exasperated cry. “Y-you should know it’s against the rules to run in the hallway.  It’s an incredible health hazard. Didn’t you used to be student council president or something?”  
  
“Used to? What are you talking about? I’m student council president Kurokami Medaka.”  
  
She was a girl with the air of a student council president, rule-abiding, awfully serious and popular with teachers, one of the rare breeds that only exist in anime and manga these days. She had been student council president all of her life, and had an air about her that suggests she will continue to be president all her life, and is the president of all presidents. There are rumors that she might have been chosen by the gods to be a student council president.  
  
Mikan realized she had regressed to the Medaka who had first transferred into Hope’s Peak two years ago.  
  
“I will take on the requests of anybody, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No matter the circumstances there are no exceptions.” 

“Umm… Okay, can you let me go then?”  
  
“No can do. Actually, I’m here to kidnap you. You can call it a Meda-Kidnapping, ahahahaha!”  
  
Mikan got the sense Medaka was being weird again. “That’s even more illegal than running in the halls.”  
  
“Hmmmm? You’re always joking around like that. What’s a little kidnapping between friends?” Medaka said as she threw Tsumiki over her shoulder. Tsumiki realized Medaka must have waited for Emukae to get bored and wander off before cornering her. Damn that girl’s short attention span!  
  
“But we’re not friends!” Tsumiki cried out only to be promptly ignored. 

Medaka Kurokami, her family had been killed while she was unaware, she had discovered the head of her own older brother, and she did not have a single person to trust among the other participants in this game. Not only that but Kamukura was playing mind games with her. She had become a tragic girl, but she didn’t seem to realize she was in a tragedy.  
  
It reminded her somewhat of Komaeda. That same kind of dissonance, where Komaeda cheerfully declared there was still hope right after somebody had just died.

Medaka is a kind human  being, good at taking care of people. And it is honestly unfortunate she is a determined person as well. She was such a serious person that she didn't budge once she made up her mind. If only she could run away, if only she could give up, she would not be in so much pain right now.  
  
She wasn’t self-conscious enough. And this was coming from Mikan who was far too self conscious. She seemed to think of herself as “a normal girl whose only feature is her diligence.” In her opinion anyone would get good grades if they studied hard enough.  
  
Energetic and bright.  
There was something wrong with Mikan, everyone who met her thought so.  
If Mikan was ‘wrong” then Medaka was certainly ‘right.’  
But Mikan found all of those good qualities of Medaka’s to be just a little bit scary.  
  
Medaka had lightly jogged there with Mikan held over her shoulder like a sack of kittens. Mikan felt awkward the entire time because she couldn’t think of anything to talk about. Would Medaka hate her now? She must hate her now. She must think she’s a boring and useless girl. She probably wanted to kidnap Matsuda instead.  
  
Mikan was saved from her spiral by being thrown on the floor. She had closed her eyes before her impact on the floor, but opened them to see Fuyuhiko’s body next to hers. His face was swollen and bruised. He clearly had been beaten in several places. His leg was broken so badly it was bent in the wrong direction and the bone stuck out from his flesh. She turned her head around and saw white hair spilling everywhere, and blunt force trauma dealt to Pekoyama’s head ripping off her skin in several places.  
  
"Where's Tojo-san? What happened?"  
  
"I dunno, I just found them like that." Medaka shrugged. "I don’t have the talents of the Ultimate Nurse, so you’ll have to bandage them up.”  
  
“Umm… I can’t.” Mikan revealed her forbidden action to Medaka. **Cannot use talents as the Ultimate Nurse.**

Medaka smacked her on the back a little bit too hard. “It’s fine. It’s fine. Even if you die, I’ll always carry you with me.”  
  
Was she supposed to be comforted by that kind of cheesy line. “Even if you die...” Mikan muttered to herself.  
  
“In any case let’s get these two patched up so we can hand them over to the police.”  
  
“B-b-but, I won’t let you do that.”  
  
“Oh? What are you going to do?”  
  
“I’ll cry, I’ll definitely cry!” Mikan realized she was not really in a position to be making demands.  
  
“Waaaaah! Mikan got mad! I only said the obvious!” Mikan got the feeling nobody could stop Kurokami Medaka anymore. Medaka looked over Kuzuryuu, and slid her hand along his sleeping face. “If you look at him while he’s sleeping, he’s just a cute brat… Jeez. Fucking brat.”  
  
Medaka’s entire face went cold as she noticed something.   
  
“Hm.”  
  
“W-what is it?”  
  
“Whoops. His heart’s stopped.”  
  
“That’s not very good for his health.” Mikan squeaked.  
  
“Don’t worry. I’ll revive him in a bit. You always act like you’re dying, even over the tiniest little things. Can’t you just get over it? Life’s hard for everyone you know. Use all that energy you use whining about every last thing to work harder.” 

“But he really is going to die. P-please, Medaka-chan stop playing with people’s lives. This is a serious moment.”  
  
“Do you want to give Pekoyama the kiss of life, smooch, smooch?”  
  
“N-no way, Kuzuryuu-kun will get mad at me if I do.”  
  
“Wait. Really? Those two like each other?”  
  
How oblivious can one girl get?  
  
“Wait, we’ve got time. Let’s gossip a little bit. I’ve never gossiped with a female classmate before.” Medaka casually sat down next to Fuyuhiko who was flatlining.  
  
“Please take this seriously. You’re acting like… like…” Mikan did not even want to say it. She did not even want to think about her. That girl whose shadow hung so heavily over her every action. That girl who’s hands even now were overlaid over Mikan’s own hands, and her fingers curling in the gaps between Mikan’s fingers, enticing her to…  
  
“You’re so boring… boring. Idiot. Dumbass. I hate Mikan!”  
  
She really does hate me!

Medaka suddenly punched Fuyuhiko in the chest as hard as she could. That must have broken a rib. Mikan pushed Medaka out of the way and pressed her head against Fuyuhiko’s chest. She could hear his heartbeat strong in his chest. Mikan’s ears began to tear up, she was… relieved? That’s right Fuyuhiko once told her that after she came to school with a particularly bad bruise that if she needed someone to take care of her father, he would call out a hit, and then give her a job as a back alley doctor if she had nowhere to go afterwards. Mikan really did love her classmates. It’s just in Mikan’s experience, love just never seemed to last.  
  
“Alright, alright. He’s revived, he’s revived.” Medaka shrugged it all off. Dying and living, killing or being killed, even those things could be re-done or restarted by her. Mikan’s feelings went straight past exasperation and into feeling hollow.  
  
Really - to this person, it was nothing. Acting and lying, counterfeit and fraud, hope and despair, everything and anything was irrelevant to Kurokami Medaka. Even if there were relevancy - there was no meaning.  
  
“Your friends really might die if you don’t attend to their wounds. I understand. It’s not your fault.  Why was everyone so mean to my precious Mikan? They kicked you. They insulted you. They stepped on you. When all you ever wanted was to help people. It was hard wasn’t it? It hurt, didn’t it?”  
  
Such empty words of sympathy.  
Medaka ran her fingers through the uneven bob cut that remained of Mikan’s hair. Though she was trying to stroke Mikans’ hair gently, with all the knots and tangles in her hair Mikan could not help but feel uncomfortable. _Mother showed her affection by brushing my hair._ She would sit Mikan down, and forcefully comb through every last tangle in her hair until her hair was completely straight. If Mikan squirmed too much she was disciplined. Mother would drag the brush through, while there were tears in Mikan’s eyes. Mikan hated when her hair was touched.  
  
“Don’t worry! Even if nobody else loves you. I will give you all of my love.”  
  
Medaka crawled on top of Mikan who was just lying there and kissed her.  
  
As if to steal her breath away.  
As if to suffocate her.  
  
A flower.  
A flower bitten off from its stem.  
Its petals chewed and mashed into tiny little pieces.  
The bud swallowed whole.  
That girl was eating flowers.  
  
Mikan gasped into Medaka's lips and felt like she was inhaling a madness that girl exhumed, like fumes, like the scent of flowers. Before Medaka’s eyes she wore not a thread. There was no love. There was no love at all in the gesture. 

Mikan wanted to scream, but Medaka’s mouth blocked her from doing so. It’s like a fairy tale. It certainly is to her. This might be the first time Mikan had ever pitied someone else. That girl really didn’t understand what she was doing. Mikan saw for a moment Junko’s silhouette overlapped with Medaka’s.  
  
This was just like her.  
If she closed her eyes Mikan could imagine she was in the arms of her beloved.  
“Emukae…”  
Mikan gasped as she tried to push the other girl off of her.  
“Emukae help me.”  
  
🧸

 

Mikan had been kissed before. She had never kissed someone she liked, though. Because kissing a boy would get her attention. Because it might make him like her. Because if they were kissing she did not have to try to talk at least. She didn’t like it, she didn’t say no either.  
  
When Medaka pulled away Mikan immediately stuck her fingers in her mouth, all the way to the back of her throat. She vomited up trying to get the filthy feeling out of her mouth. Medaka just watched in confusion unsure of what was happening. She wanted to say sorry to Fuyuhiko, for vomiting all over his new suit but that wasn’t important right now.  
  
“That’s no good, you shouldn’t kiss someone you don’t love.”  
  
“But I do love you.”  
  
“No you don’t, you narcissist.” That accusation gave Medaka pause. Medaka who loves all of humanity should have really been more cautious of this girl and her twisted love, and she never should have given her a reason to despair. Medaka was still looming over her and Mikan was down on her back pinned to the ground but that was fine.  
  
The lowly and despicable minus didn’t manipulate people with force or charisma like Enoshima Junko or Kurokami Medaka did. They were special cases who could manipulate others even when they were on their knees, or on their back. It was something that a girl never forced to go on her knees, and never forced to just lie there and take while she laid on her back could never know.  
  
“I”m just trying to save you, Tsumiki-senpai.”  
  
“You know what I think? I think Enoshima thought she was saving people too. Class 78 was always going to fall in despair. If Enoshima never interfered we would probably just slit our wrists alone, or commit group suicide or something. I’m sure she thought she was giving us a chance to fight back.”  
  
Medaka punched the ground in frustration. “I’m not like Enoshima. Why do you keep saying that? Enoshima doesn’t have a single human feeling inside of her. She didn’t care what happened to other people.”  
  
“You really are oblivious, it’s cute.” 

Mikan cupped her cheek. She dragged her fingers along her skin as if she was touching something fragile,  like a spider web.  Then suddenly she dragged her nails through her skin scratching until she bleed.  She did not even seem to notice she was bleeding staring up with a blissful expression on her face that completely unnerved Medaka.

“How am I being cute?”

While Medaka hesitated Mikan kicked both feet up to force her off. She did not run away once she was free.  She stood up and curled her fingers in the air. She looked like she was holding back ecstasy, like her whole body was shaking with the effort. It looked painful to hold back.  Maddening.  
  
“Narcissists lack object permanence.”  
  
“Are you calling me a baby?”  
  
“Mm, no it’s more like. If they don’t pay attention to you every minute of every day, you forget about them. They love you, but you can’t feel that love not really. Your attachment is insecure. No matter how long you’ve been friends.”  
  
Mikan was trembling. Like she was being tickled all over.  Thoroughly enjoying herself.  Squirming like a worm. Lije a lowly creature Like she needed to be punished. She bit her lip so hard until it bled. She laughed with a mouth full of blood. She looked like she might bite her own tongue off of monomers stopped her.  
  
“I’m really scared that people will lose interest in me too. I think up conversations and keep them on flash cards, oh but I’m really dumb so I always forget them in the moment. But I noticed, you don’t start conversations with people at all. You don’t bring up new topics. You just respond. It’s like you’re not even interested in the person you’re talking to…”  
  
“Zenkichi…”  
  
“Are you sure you really love Hitoyoshi-kun? Do you even miss him anymore.”

Mikan embraced herself because no one else would.  She clung to herself tightly. Medaka could not tell if the girl was being held in the embrace of her lover or a straight jacket.   
  
“Be quiet.”

Her slender form. She swung back and forth in a jerking motion. Sway, sway. Like a corpse hanging from the ceiling. Sway, sway. It looked like her upper body might just break off at her lithe waist. Then suddenly she became deathly still as if rigor Morris had set in.   
  
“He was really a convenient friend for you to have. He was always chasing around after you. He always took care of you. You never had to worry about forgetting him because he was always around you, vying for your attention, just living to devote himself to you.”  
  
“That’s not…”

Mikan groped her own breast. She felt all over her chest as if searching for something. Then she sighed in relief. She had a heart after all. She kept feeling for it, kept feeling herself.    
  
“You see narcissist's make relationships with people just to pad out their own ego. Even if you love yourself, being alone with yourself is quite lonely. You can’t understand why anyone would stay with you, you don’t know how to say the words to convey feelings, or make them stay so you just make them stay by making them obsessed with you. Oh wow, I just talked a lot you look really bored.”  
  
“I didn’t know. Why would I do any of that on purpose? Zenkichi really was my friend at the time. I don’t understand people enough to manipulate them the way Enoshima does. I didn’t want any of this.”

Mikan suddenly grew irrationally frustrated. Medaka really was annoying. She grabbed onto her unevenly cut hair of many different lengths and pulled on to long strands as hard as she could. Her tone was no longer sweet and soothing, it had gone from medicine on the lips to poison she spat out.

“You’re so clumsy! You’re clumsier than a clumsy idiot like me! You don’t want these things? Then what do you want? Hey, hey, oh sorry am I being annoying? Am I pestering you?”  
  
“I want…I just want to help people.”  
  
Medaka grabbed the bandages that trailed off of her body before Mikan could slip away from her. She pulled on them hard. They become undone. Mikan could feeling herself becoming undone as well. She watched the bandages tear. She wished Medaka would not do that. She was hiding those scars because she didn’t want anybody to see.  
  
Mikan ran, and Medaka chased after her. Mikan spun a syringe in her hand and turned to stab Medaka but Medaka did not hesitate at all even after the syringe was plunged into her neck.  
  
Medaka just grabbed Mikan by the neck and lifted her up.  
  
“You don’t want anything for yourself at all. A desireless girl is no better than a flower vase.” She was beautiful but that was it. Nothing more than an empty decoration. Medaka had already become cracked too, any water poured in would slowly drain out. “I think you’re an especially good person, Medaka-chan. You’re some saint. So holy that no one could ever hope to come near you, but what good is that?”  
  
Mikan kept struggling against her, so Medaka finally brought her knee into Mikan’s gut. Mikan could feel a fresh wave of nausea hitting her and rolling against her.  
  
“Why don’t you get it? Just give up already. Surrender. Stop fighting back.”  
  
“You keep saying you want to help people.  But you’d never help a person like me. Never have. Never will. You throw us to the wolves. Everybody, even a little like me. You don’t know or care, but.. Kumagawa he, he was the first person who told me my scars are beautiful.”  
  
Kumagawa was a star only those in despair could see.  
Behind people like Medaka who were too intensely bright like the sun, he would disappear.  
  
Medaka pinned Mikan to the ground once more. Milan's entire face was read.  She squirmed. She was sweating so much she felt slimy to the touch.  “You’re not helping anyone. You’re only hurting yourself. If you don’t give up, then someone will have to die.”  
  
“You ignore everyone who doesn’t fit into your convenient black and white view of the world, and yet you yourself pretend to be saintly, drunk in your own narrow views. You’re right, you’re not a saint, you’re not a princess, you’re not even like Enoshima Junko, you’re worse than her, you’re a little girl who spun a cocoon around herself in order to keep her idealized view of the world.”

Medaka plucked the needle and syringe out of her neck. It was a long glass syringe like the ones that cartoon nurses used. Medaka broke it against the ground, until the edges were jagged and sharp.  
  
“Why don’t you ever give up?”  
  
“My… mother…”  
  
“Your mother?”  
  
That seemed to strike a chord with Medaka. She dropped the syringe forgetting what she was going to do with it.  
  
“Sh-she was a doctor but, when I came home from school everyday covered in cuts and bruises she never even bandaged her wounds. She never even looked at me. Even though everybody at work praised her and called her a good doctor who always did her best to save her patience, I had to bandage myself up alone in the bathroom.”  
  
Medaka wasn’t listening. She didn’t hear those words.  
  
“You’re lucky your mom died before you even had to meet her. But, the way you act right now you’d make a terrible mother.”  
  
Why did those words bother her so much? She had to save everyone from the killing game. She was not planning to settle down with a family. She never even envisioned such a normal life for herself.  
  
Did Zenkichi want that?  
What was the reason he had followed her around for so many years?  
Medaka could not comprehend that.  
Did he really think-  
Eventually she would notice.  
Eventually she would care. 

A normal life. She hoped their child wouldn't be anything special. She hoped it was a little more like Zenkichi. Medaka would go to work every day, and Zenkichi would be the house husband who did all the chores and it would be a small house, and a boring and unexciting life but it would be theirs. 

Oh, but she would probably ignore that child and treat her horribly while she was working to save everybody else. Not a saint. Not a princess. Just a girl wrapped in a cocoon. Medaka just ignored others who did not fit her world view, did not even pay attention. That’s right people got mad at Komaeda too, for only seeing things in the strict black and white of hope and despair. Even if there was someone crying in front of him, it was like he did not even see their tears.  
  
Which is why she didn’t notice the stake driven into her neck.  
  
“You should pay more attention. Atua demands all of your attention, and also your money if you want a platinum membership. That has more benefits than the gold membership.”  
  
There was a girl standing a few feet away from Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama’s bodies holding in one hand a hammer and the other hand a sharpened stake 

 

🦔

 

“Awe man. Why didn’t ya even try to dodge?”  
  
Angie was completely unaffected by the mood around her, in her own little world. For the first time Medaka understood how terrifying that was. “You have no reason to attack me, so I have no reason to dodge.”  
  
“Seriously, what a good girl! You’re really making me feel like I’m the killer here.”  
  
“B-but you are the killer.” Mikan deadpanned.  
  
“What’s a little bit of murder betewen friends?”  
  
“You think we’re friends?” Medaka asked.  
  
“That’s right! I really admire you. You work so hard, Medaka-chan. You’re always trying to keep everyone safe. Even when you go berserk, you’re still so considerate of everyone else, aren’t you? I know this… because Atua is always watching you… Don’t worry you’re not alone. Atua is like a gentle mother, watching over you and keeping you safe.”

Dark skin.  
Colorless hair, colorless eyes.  
Walking in sandals like she was just going out for a day on the beach.  
Wearing a swimsuit, and a long jacket over it. 

There was Medaka who ignored sad things. Despairful things. Who intentionally looked away from them, and then there was Angie who did not even seem to feel them at all.  
  
“Yonaga, I once read through an entire map of the world and memorized it because I was bored.”  
  
“Mmmyeah, so?”  
  
“The island that you claim to be from never even existed to begin with.”  
  
“Oh my, then am I a space alien?”  
  
“There’s no religion even among the elicit and shady cults that Japan has to offer that lists Atua as their deity, or any from southeast asia for that matter. There’s hundreds of thousands of gods but Atua isn’t one of them.”  
  
“Nyahahahaha! Aren’t you a sharp one? And I thought your role was just to stand there and look good. You’re doubting Atua’s presence!? Atua exists beyond time itself, and I’m certain you will feel his presence very soon after I send you to him.” 

“Why are you doing this?” Medaka asked, placing her body between Angie and Mikan.  
  
“Because. I was born with pale gray hair on my head, and no colors in my eyes. Because I was born a special child able to hear the voices of the gods. Because, I was born to help other people.”  
  
"That's a lie. Just tell me why you really kill people."  
  
"Atua told me too."   
  
"Atua doesn't exist."  
  
"Then if Atua didn't then someone else did. You have to obey the rules. You have to do what you're told, and do everything the higher ups say. That's what being good in a cult, means."   
  
From a young age, I was kind and clever.  
I always helped people in need and made them happy, because that was my mission. 

Angie still remembered being worshipped and prayed by every adult she met. Adults who came crying to her, a child saying they were in suffering and in pain and didn’t know what to do. She had to sit and listen to their life stories. She had her entire day eaten up by these people. They would bow and say they wanted him to lead them to paradise.  
  
She never really got to know what genuine emotions were. Because the tears of all the adults who were grabbing at her feet, begging her for help always seemed so fake. She cried too, but her tears were also fake. 

If too many hands rub against an idol, that idol will become filthy and covered in dirt. There were handprints left behind by the many hands that had reached out to her asking for help. Even though she was surrounded by flowers at all times she could not get their stink off of her.  
  
When she was alone she tried to paint herself, but it always ended in failure. No matter how many times she drew herself on the canvas it always looked wrong. One day she grabbed a paint spreader and ruined the image completely, slicing the ‘Angie’ on the canvas to bits. It finally looked right.  
  
One day a boy came to visit her. He was an anthropologist who wanted to study her cult. He said it was a waste, having her live all alone like some hermit. He was the first person who listened to her, instead of immediately coming to her to complain about her problems.  
  
He told her to paint her feelings.  
She told him her feelings would ruin her.  
He told her to paint the canvas.  
  
He was more burdened then anyone else, he was covered in bandages, and moved like there were a set of invisible ropes around him that only he could see. No matter what he was always being tightly constricted. When Angie was with the green haired youth she could feel another presence hanging off of him like a ghost. There was no one more haunted.  
  
It made her happy to meet someone whose skull was cracked in the exact same way that hers were. He wanted nothing out of her but to observe. That was all he did. He observed others. He never reacted, never frowned or smiled. He seemed to find everything that every human being did beautiful. Even if someone were to rip his intestines out and show it to him he would find it beautiful.  
  
The place she lived in was a church, but there was no god there. Angie realized that, and told it to him. When you die you just become nothing. You stop feeling anything. Your heart and your brain stops. You rot and return to the earth. They just could not accept that fact. She told them this and he listened to her. He said if there truly is nothing after death then he would like to explore the nothingness together with her. She was never lonely, or sad, and didn’t feel like she was suffering until she had met him.

There was no god, but Angie felt like she had finally found salvation in another person.  
He disappeared one day.  
It was like he was never there.  
Angie was alone after all.  
That proved it.  
  
In the end she had to pray to god too, because that was all she had. That’s not true, you weren’t the messiah of a cult or anything like that. You weren’t born on some island far away from other people. You’re just a foreigner. The child of immigrants.  
  
When you were young you were always ill due to the weak constitution your body was born with. That’s why your mother fell victim to one of the many predatory cults of japan. When you recovered, your mother fell further and further into the religion. Then one day your mother said she wanted to introduce you to a special man. He was one of the higher ups of the cult.  
  
You realized in that moment. That she was offering you to him. She had sold her own daughter to him. That man assaulted you, and your mother didn’t try to help. You’re not actually an atheist. You acknowledge god might exist. And he was a man of such perfect, flawless character, that he watched over everyone equally - the strong and the week, the rich and the poor - and never played favorites or reached out his hand to any of them. _Oh what a wonderful god. He can just drop dead._

And then, and then and then.  
His hands. His hands. His hands.  
Hands everywhere.  
His hands reducing you to an idol, reducing your body to an object to be worthless.  
It’s a lie! It’s a lie! It’s a lie!  
  
Your father was a lecher who dallied with female cult followers one after another, and your mother stabbed him to death. When you saw it you were surprised. Your mother wasn’t so useless after all. She could have killed the man who was hurting you, she could have taken a knife and stabbed him over and over again but she didn’t. And afterwards she went crazy and killed herself with poison. Angie Yonaga is a fictional character. A foreign transfer student from the islands with an eccentric personality.  
  
Nobody saved you, you were left all alone. At that point you had stopped feeling anything for her as a mother. You simply tossed those feelings away. You felt weightless. You just wished she wouldn’t mess up the room. The smell of blood was awful. You needed to air out the room immediately otherwise the smell would sink between the cracks in the tatami mat floor. Angie Yonaga is the Ultimate Artist. She attended Hope’s Peak as a part of the 79th class. When she closes her eyes she slips into a fugue state and claims that Atua is merely using her body as a vessel in order to create art. Atua is the god of her home island. She claims to be able to hear his voice, and as a result everyone in her island gives her whatever she asks. She’s been spoiled, never told no, never refused.  
  
You were found completely by accident.  
A random serial killer broke into your house to kill you and found those two already dead.  
He said there was a place for people like us.  
If you don’t have a family anymore you can become part of the Shiranui. 

“You killed all of those people for no reason at all.” Medaka was getting angry, her eyes glowing an intense red. “You don’t even deserve to be called human. I’ll kill you.”  
  
“That’s neat! I wonder if I’ll see Korekiyo again!? I’m excited!”  
  
Angie proclaimed aloud even though the other two girls who were awake had no idea what she was talking about.  
  
“Let’s explore the nothingness together, just like we promised.”   
  



	67. Freddy vs Jason

Zerozaki Hitoshiki offered his own hand to Hijirihara Takumi, but while the boy was debating on whether or not to take it something splashed in his eyes. His whole face was painted pink with Zerozaki’s blood. 

 _I don’t love this._ Takumi thought as he saw Zerozaki’s legs wobble like jelly and give out under him. _I don’t love this at all._ There was no love in the eyes that watched as Zerozaki desperately put a hand on the freshly made hole on his body as if he could stop the blood from coming out.   
  
He loved murder more than anything else, but watching one so close helplessly. He hated this. Not being able to do a single thing while Zerozaki was dying in front of him. Hated it. He would rate it zero out of one hundred. A passionless murder. An artless crime.   
  
Then it was Takumi’s turn to die.   
A paint knife shoved into his stomach, and then one into the center of his forehead. He was killed and then killed again.   
  
“That’s awesome… Totally awesome…”   
  
Takumi said in admiration from the person who had just killed him. His mouth was still functioning somehow but his lips were feeling a little rubbery, and he drooled in massive amounts as he spoke.   
  
He was about to die. Just like his classmates. Die. Crushed and ripped apart and smashed open and devoured and die and die and die endlessly. The color of a pretty girl’s guts, the sensation of an upperclassmen’s spleen, even those bowels he had never seen before, Takumi experienced them one after another Ever since that day. Continuous. Ceaseless. Bloodshed. And he loved it. Enjoying murder. Loving the sight of blood. He was like a monster feasting upon the innards of others. Bloodthirsty. Sucking the blood of others. Like a parasite. Someone who can’t live without others. Like a vampire. Undead. Someone who shouldn’t even have been alive. Someone who shouldn’t have survived that day. Sick. Sick. Sick. And Wrong.   
  
It was like there was a lag time because of the paint knife that had stabbed through his forehead. A signal had misfired, and his brain was slow in realizing that the rest of his body was slowly dying. The pain in his stomach only registered to him just now.   
  
“What is it? Hey, what?” 

He didn’t realize that dying hurt so much. He casually put his hand on his stomach and felt something hot and slippery, and then he stared fixedly at his own hand, dyed a light rose pink.   
  
“Whoooooooaaa…”   
  
Pink. Pure, captivating pink.   
The glistening, vivid, fundamental color he had always been seeking. He met Mukuro and saw his classmates bleed and that day his whole world had been dyed that color. He had just wanted to see it again, the color he saw that day.   
  
Ah, this is it - Takumi instantly understood, a faint smile on his pale lips. The color he was searching for all along. The thing he tears through all sorts of places to find out but never could attain, the true “pink”.   
  
Lovingly, he embraced his abdomen gushing fresh with blood.   
  
“I see… I never realized, huh…”   
  
Moths fly to the light, because the darkest place is actually the spot just under the light. Something like that. Yeah. Like hiding a tree in the forest. Like hiding in a forest of corpses. It was so obvious he didn’t realize. He never thought that what he was seeking could be hidden somewhere so near himself.   
  
He was intoxicated as if he was bleeding wine, his skull completely filled by the surging analgesia. That was when he realized he had been stabbed in the center of the forehead too. That hurt. Aaaa. AAAAA. A. AAAAA..AAA...A….AAA…. Get it out. Get it out. Get it out. He weakly grabbed at the paint knife in his forehead and tried to pull it out. AaaaAAAaaa. The twisting of my flesh. My brain. My brain. My brain. Going through my head. That right. That left. Aaaaaaaaaa. Leaving a large hole between his left side and right side brains. A hole. A hole. A hole. AAAAAAaaa. I can see the hole now. I can’t ignore it. Aaaaaaaa.   
  
I’ll kill you. Kill myself. Wanna die. Who’s fault is this? Common sense? Society? Whatever. Aaaaa. It’s all going numb. It’s not numb enough. How much time do we spend trying to make ourselves feel nothing even though we’re human beings capable of so many feelings? Aaaaaaaa.. Just think about it. No. It hurts to think. The brain melts. It becomes a thick soup that leaks out of the cracks in his head. Aaaa. 

Stand up.  
No, that’s impossible.   
You’re not dead yet. Stand up. And go after her.   
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts to be killed. Nobody told me that it hurt. Did it hurt like this when I killed people? Why does it hurt so much to die? Did my classmates suffer like this. It hurts. Aaaaa. You’re not dead. As long as you’re not dead you’re fine. He was able to force himself to stand. Like a Zombie. Like the head has been cut off, and the body is just responding to rudimentary signals. With no destination in mind just keep walking forward you can do that at least, right? 

He stepped over what must have been Zerozaki’s corpse by now.   
  
“Goodnight Zerozaki, and have a sweet dream.”   
  
He heard bones crunching underneath his feet.   
  
“I’m going to have a bad dream.”   
  
He must have whispered that because it was the last thing he heard before his world went black. The next time he heard a voice speaking it wasn’t his.   
  
“Okay, it’s time for the moral lesson. Today’s theme is.”   
  
The door of a locker that had been rusted shut swung open. The child that had been pounding on the inside finally stepped out. Takumi was no longer a skinny kid shoved into an ill fitting suit in the middle of the city streets. All of the injuries on his body had disappeared and he had gone back to exactly as he had been two years ago, thirteen years of age, second year middle schooler Hijirihara Takumi.   
  
A kid who hid his eyes behind his bangs and never spoke up to anyone. A kid who didn’t understand what “common sense” was, but was an otherwise speckless youth who never held any bad intentions towards anyone.   
  
The first thing he stepped on was an outstretched hand of one of his classmates. The finger bones were crushed easily underneath his feet. Takumi had just watched them die from behind the door of the locker, but the strangest thing it was like two years had passed in this room without anybody cleaning up the bodies. All flesh had rotted away. The air was heavy with flies. The smell had sunk into the floor. He saw half of a girl’s face still twisted up with the horrifying expression she had in death, and the other half had rotted away revealing the pale bone underneath, and because of that the skin was sagging off of the bone. The majority of the corpses had been entirely picked clean.   
  
Takumi walked forward.

With every step flowers bloomed.   
Overflowing flowers.   
Festering Corpses.   
Flower buds stretched towards the sky and when they opened up Takumi could see the skulls of his classmates resting at the center of the flowers. Skulls surrounded by yellow sunflower petals. Disgusting flowers. Watered by. His oozing brain fluid. Roots growing in the empty spaces between synapses that were no longer in use. Those flowers were his life force. They were him. They bloomed inside of him. Don’t step on him. Don’t step on his life force.   
Without even a destination in mind.   
He kept walking forward.   
He kept walking on sunflowers.   
  
“Hey, hey, over here!”   
  
A girl in a bunny mask spoke up behind him. She was standing in front of a door that seemed to lead to nowhere. That girl wore a flack jacket, and a school uniform with a skirt underneath. It was obviously Ikusaba Mukuro, Takumi had no idea why she was trying to hide her identity.   
  
“You’ve come for the moral lessons, right? Then it’s not that way, but this way. Hurry up, or you’re gonna be late.” 

“Ah, okay…” Takumi replied mindlessly. Despite how much of a loner he was, he was also the type that was too awkward to say no to other people, and ended up just going along with what other people said.   
  
“Hey, Mukuro.”   
  
“It’s Monomi! I’m your caring teacher Monomi.”   
  
“Oh, uhh… hey, Monomi.”   
  
“Speak up. Speak more directly. Don’t mumble.”   
  
“Saying I have to make eye contact and speak clearly without mumbling is like telling me I can’t speak at all. I can’t communicate like a normal person you really are expecting too much of me.” Apparently he could ramble on like this even with a knife in his brain. “What is this place?”   
  
“It’s a graveyard for the people we’ve killed.”   
  
“No duh.”   
  
“You’re a very rude boy, you know that. You’re not going to make a lot of friends with that attitude. I know deep down inside you’re a nice person-”   
  
“I murder people and I’m rude, I really am the whole package.” 

Right now, he was in a graveyard.   
Traditional memorial stones all around him.   
That wasn’t what confused him.   
‘I want to become a guitar player in a band.’   
‘I want to become a detective.’ 

‘I want to have a family.’ 

He felt as though he’d been here for a very long time.  
He’d been here as long as he could remember.   
Surrounded by gravestones on all sides.   
He suddenly realized.   
These are.   
These are the graves of the people I’ve killed.   
These are.   
Futures cut short.   
  
“You know every single person is an individual. That’s easy to say, but it's hard to visualize. They all have their own hopes and dreams, so that’s why you should be nice to everyone you meet!”   
  
“You say some pretty useless things, Mukuro.”   
  
“I told you it’s Monomi!” 

The girl with the bunny head pushed the gravestone over, revealing a staircase that both of them could descend. Takumi realized the gravestone she had pushed over was his own grave. ‘I want to stay friends with Shuuji forever. Even though we won’t be middle schoolers much longer, I want things to stay exactly like this’. What a stupid wish. The moment he walked into the classroom, the girl with the bunny head was kneed in the face and fell to the ground. Another girl appeared wearing a flashy bra, a short skirt, and a bear head similiar to the one a theme park mascot in a suit might wear.   
  
“Heya, kiddos! It’s time for a moral lesson.”   
  
It was an empty classroom. The kind that Kumagawa Misogi usually woke up in after he died, but it was completely flipped upside down. At first Takumi thought the writing on the chalkboard was upside down as well, until he realized that he was standing on the ceiling. Oh it wasn’t the classroom that was wrong. It wasn’t the classroom that was flipped upside down. It was just him. 

The blood was rushing to his head.  
He felt unpleasant, sick all over.   
  
“Enoshima, you should be nicer to your sister. Murder is excusable, but kicking your only sister is just unpleasant.”   
  
“Wow, did you just say murder is excusable! This kid really needs a moral lesson! And it’s Monokuma.”

  
“Zzzzz.”   
  
“Stop napping in class! God you’re a terrible student.”   
  
“It’s not my fault I’m a middle school dropout. In fact it’s your fault. You blew up my middle school.”   
  
“Be a good kid and listen.”   
  
“I don’t wanna be a good kid, I wanna be a bad one. I’m a dropout. I’m a sign of everything that’s wrong with today’s society.”   
  
“Be a bad kid and listen.”   
  
“Okay, okay…” Takumi droned on in the same emotionless voice as always.   
  
“Okay, okay! It’s time for moral lessons. Today’s theme is, how many times can one kill before given the death penalty?” Takumi was back in a middle school classroom, he was seated on the ceiling but it was otherwise his normal middle school classroom. His classmates who were once dead were now alive again, sitting next to him. The features of their faces were impossible to make out, the more he squinted the blurrier they became. “The death penalty is the heaviest penalty. In this country if you do bad things, you can be killed. Or you can also be killed even if you don’t do bad things. So, now I want all of you to give me your opinion. And now let’s feel despair together!”   
  
“What’s the death penalty?” Takumi asked.   
  
“You really are a dumb kid.”   
  
“You’re gonna hurt my feelings. I’m a sensitive boy, you know. I’m oversensitive. That’s why I never want to go outside. Nobody is going to hurt my feelings in my own house, except for myself when I look in the mirror and feel disappointed.”   
  
“I’ll explain it.”   
  
The death penalty.   
Like.   
“Death by the electric chair.”   
  
Punishment time.   
  
Suddenly he was sitting in a chair. 2,000 volts screaming through his body at once. His neurons light in fire inside of him. His brain fried. He shouldn’t be able to feel pain but he does. His senses should be overloaded by electricity but they aren’t. All he can do is struggle and spasm as his arms and legs are tied to a hard wooden chair as the current continuously runs through his body.   
  
“Death by hanging.”

Monokuma kicked the chair out from underneath him.   
  
He felt the rope tighten around his neck, but his neck didn’t break when he fell. If the neck does not break immediately, then the only way to die is by a slow suffocation. The body is too heavy to support itself, so the entirety of the body’s weight is pushed against the lungs and they struggle to breathe. The shoulders become too heavy, the back becomes too heavy, the feet are too heavy, this body is too heavy I cannot continue on.   
  
“Death by shooting.”

  
Several Monokumas appeared carrying Tommy Guns. They all fired at once.   
  
He was shot from every angle. However, a person can get stabbed hundreds of times and may not die. If a bullet cleanly passes through the body they might not die right away. There’s several holes in his body but none of them are fatal. He had  to wait for a shot to the brain or to the heart to finally kill him.   
  
“Skewered all over with spears.”

Monokuma pressed a button and spears came up from the floor stabbing his body all over. They pulled out as quickly as they shot up, and he fell back in his chair his body still full of holes.   
  
He saw the way Mukuro died and he liked it. Her  body was covered in holes. That was the way he saw everyone else. They all had invisible holes. They kept living even though their bodies were like swiss cheese. Finally, someone else besides him could see the holes.   
  
Dying over and over again, but not dying.   
This was hell probably. 

He fell back into his seat in the classroom and he noticed all the other students were just watching his execution. All there, just silently watching. Monokuma (Junko) seemed to get bored of killing him over and over again, and just continued on.   
  
“There are many methods we can use to kill the bad guys. Also, for killing the good guys. Is it right for the bad guys to get killed? Do you feel better when unforgivable evil dies?” 

“If you kill someone you should pay with your life. The death penalty is just.” A student declared.  
  
“You’re right life is precious. That’s why people who approve of the death penalty should die too,” Monokuma (Junko) answered. “Even those who are against the death penalty will give the death penalty to someone who killed 100 million people, right? This guy should just die. Even if she’s a really cute girl who ended the world for aesthetic reasons. So, what is the baseline for when you start thinking this?”   
  
One person. Eight people. One person. Ten people. One hundred people. Eight People. Nine people. Thirteen people. One person. One person. One person. One person. One person. One person. One person. One person.   
  
“But teacher I…”   
  
“What is Takumi? Speak up and stop slouching for once in your godforsaken life. How did you survive a school shooting exactly? You’re a failure at life. You’re such a failure you really should have been strangled by your own umbilical cord in the womb. The fact that you’ve survived this long really is proof that god doesn’t give a shit at all.”   
  
“Teacher I… I don’t want to kill Shuuji.”   
  


That’s right.  
You never wanted to kill anybody, did you?   
You never thought murder was a beautiful thing.   
What you were really thinking back then…   
All the way back in the locker.   
Stuffed in the locker in the back of your brain and long forgotten.   
What you really wanted was…   
  
  
🦔

 

“Hey, where ya goin?” Zerozaki asked as Takumi walked away. When Takumi gave no answer at all, just staring straight forward with a zombified expression and a knife between his eyes Zerozaki just spat some blood in frustration. “Fucking weirdo.”   
  
Ikkun looked at the blood pouring out of Zerozaki’s wound.   
It reminded him of something.   
Like sand in a sieve.   
Everything he tried to hold onto felt like sand falling away from his fingertips.   
  
Anything built with sand will eventually be knocked down.   
But anything knocked down can be easily rebuilt.   
So therefore the actions of building and knocking down are both equally meaningless.   
A lonely kid playing in a sandbox has no effect on the outside world.   
  
No wait. He wasn't alone. Zerozaki was with him too. Ikkun couldn’t help it, the moment he saw blood he instantly started wishing to be somewhere else. He was used to the sight, and smell, and the sound of wet blood splashing as it dripped down but being used to it and being able to deal with it were two different things.   
  
It was like how loving someone and being able to be with them were two different things. Ikkun was used to bloodshed but it still made him nauseous. Other people just made him want to vomit. They were irritating. Annoying. Itchy. Like a grain of sand in the corner of your eye.   
  
Zerozaki was laying in a pool of his own blood. He was wearing the same smile as always. “You’re just going to sit there and watch me die. What a joke.”   
  
“I don’t tell jokes.”   
  
“Eh, why not?”   
  
“One time I tried to tell a joke.”   
  
“Yeah, and?”   
  
“Nobody laughed. It wasn’t very funny. I felt awkward.”   
  
“I can’t believe we’re chatting away like this.” The entire world could have ended around them and they would just keep carelessly chatting away. Zerozaki and Ikkun. Looking in the mirror was annoying you know, but if you looked in the mirror and there was no reflection that would be far creepier. Zerozaki was the reflection of Ikkun. They were both proof that the other existed.   
  
“You know The Stranger? I think I get it now. It’s not that he pulled the trigger, it’s that he watched. He watched the man slowly bleed out in front of him without calling for help. Maybe if he had called for help that man could have been saved, people don’t always die from bullet wounds. Then, everybody else came to watch him get hanged in the end.”   
  
“Oh fuck off.” Zerozaki grumbled about Ikkun’s literary interpretations. “So you’re gonna have fun watching me die? You sicko.”   
  
“Do I look like the type of person who has fun?”   
  
“No. Not at all. You look crippled.”   
  
“I do not.”   
  
“Yes you do. You restrict yourself.” 

It wasn’t like Ikkun was a particularly moral person. He was not pondering whether it was right or wrong to let Zerozaki die, or save him. He just did not want to choose. If someone else showed up and told him what to do he would probably go along with that choice.  
  
If it meant never getting disappointing test results he would stop studying.   
If it meant never failing to make the team, he would stop trying hard at sports.   
If it meant never fighting, he would stop trying to make friends.   
  
He decided to live that way.   
  
“Kahahahaha….” Zerozaki laughed with the last of his energy, making his wound worse. “You’re killing me man.”   
  
“I’m not killing you. I’m not doing anything. You’ll die, and I’ll have nothing to do with it.”   
  
“You’ll never forget me.” 

“Not really. I’ll have forgotten about you in another three days or so.” He was a tin soldier. Simply soldiering on. He was already so battered with bad memories that this didn’t even make a dent. “Sure, I may have gained another two or three crosses to haul around on my back, but they’d be buried soon enough and that’s all there is too it.”   
  
“Bullshit.”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
“You never carried them in the first place.”   
  
“I guess I didn’t.”   
  
Even that accusation did not faze him much. Ikkun’s brownish yellow eyes, they were the same color as muddy water. He was discolored. He was dirty. He had already seen too much to be shocked, and even this didn’t move his heart. 

  
Zerozaki could hear them, the chains that rattled around Ikkun. The chains that were named ‘common sense’ and ‘logic’ that were tied around him tighter than anybody else.   
  
In the end.   
Chains.   
Connections.   
Bonds.   
  
Those were the names of things that weighed you down. Zerozaki could understand. If you swam with all of your effort. If it felt like your arms and legs were going to give up. If you breathed and coughed and tried to get the water over your lungs. If you put all that effort into swimming and you only ever treaded water. If you could only tread water with all of your effort, and you saw other people swimming just fine. If it took everthing you had merely to stay in the same place.   
  
Then all of those things were just a little too heavy, like anchors tied to his feet.   
Sure it’s heroic to jump in and save a drowning person, but if you’re not a particularly good swimmer that just means two people die instead of one.   
  
There was that old saying. People don’t get saved. People just up and save themselves all on their own. Then there was Ikkun’s twisted version. People just die, all on their own. 

That might be true, but…  
  
“Ikkun, did you really come to this city just to get killed by somebody?”   
  
“I did. Frankly, I’m a bit of a masochist.”   
  
“You liar.”   
  
“I would never lie to you about my sexual proclivities. I’m also not a creative enough person to come up with any good lies even if I wanted to..”   
  
“Shut up man. You can lie to everybody else but you can’t lie to yourself.”   
  
What are you my alter ego? My avatar? You look like I hit randomizer on the character creator option.  Ikkun rolled his eyes. “I went all the way back to japan, but she wasn’t there. I wanted to see her… They said I could see her again if I played this stupid game.”   
  
“I have someone I want to see, too.”   
  
“So what if you have loved ones just like I do? They’re not my loved ones. I don’t even know them. I can’t see them, so they might as well not exist.”    
  
There were people who simply went through life playing roles assigned to them by other people. If someone expected them to be friendly, they would be friendly. If someone expected them to fight, they would be violent. They merely catered themselves to the expectations of others, because they thought it would make them liked. Ikkun was somehow the opposite of that. Rather than someone who plays roles assigned to them, he rejected all roles. He didn’t even try to live up to other people’s expectations. He didn’t wear any masks. He disappointed everyone around him.   
  
“Fine. Be a selfish bastard. Like I give a shit! You don’t owe anybody anything! That’s right! It’s stupid to ask you to stick a neck out for a guy that you’ve only known for a few days! But you know, Ikkun. If you’re not going to save anybody else. If you’re going to put yourself above all others then do it. You’ve gotta save yourself!”   
  
Save myself. 

Ikkun finally moved. He helped Zerozaki up, and put a hand on his bleeding wound over Zerozaki’s own to try to close it. He didn’t make a choice, Ikkun reasoned with himself. He wasn’t living. He was just surviving these circumstances as he always did. Having Zerozaki next to him slightly increased his own chances of survival. That was all.   
  
“You’re a goddamn sociopath you know that?”   
  
“I disagree. A true sociopath would make the decision without any feelings involved. And they’d be far less petty.”   
  
“Ke-hahaha. The two of us together, we’re a mastepriece.” Zerozaki said.   
  
“We’re nothing.” Ikkun disagreed.   
  
  
  
🦔

 

You were having a horrible nightmare.  
You were on the brink of death.   
Takumi heard the words so distantly. 

“So you really can just stop people from dying, huh? God, if you can do that why are you such a useless, annoying bitch the rest of the time who only exists to be a pain in my ass?”   
  
“I already told you. It’s not like I stop them from dying. I just stop them from rotting. If they’re already brain dead there’s nothing we can do. It’d be like keeping someone in a coma, the body would be preserved but that’s it there’s no going back.”   
  
“Well excuse me for not knowing the bullshit rules of your bullshit ability.”   
  
“I’ll excuse you. I’ll excuse anything you do. Even if you were to kill me, I’d excuse you.”   
  
“What’s the point of doing that when you’re already dead? Braindead bitch.”   
  
“Oh, Yasukins you sweet talker.”   
  
“Fuck off. You like it way too much when I’m nasty, so I’m going to start being nice in an effort to get you to stop talking to me.”   
  
“Wait, no, don’t do that.”   
  
“Your hair is pretty. Your eyes, too, they’re pretty.”   
  
“Eeek! It burns!” 

Takumi wondered why the voices in his head were arguing with each other. Wait, that’s right he didn’t hear voices. His whole body seized and he suddenly woke up. He sat up immediately. He felt his forehead but the hole had been stitched together and Matsuda was hanging onto a bloody paint spreader.   
  
“I am literally a back alley surgeon now. I just performed surgery in a back alley. Someone revoke my medical license please.” Matsuda continued to grumble to himself. Takumi guessed that was the power of an ultimate.   
  
Matsuda had a small girl sleeping on his shoulder. She didn’t look to be a child, just short.   
  
Before Takumi could say anything (Which Takumi thought was a good thing, because whenever he was around strangers he never knew what to say) they were interrupted. Takumi saw white. He saw himself painted in white.   
  
“Hijirihara-kun.” Shuuji called out in a sickeningly sweet voice. “You can’t even die properly. You really are useless without me, aren’t you?”   
  
“Hey, wait, before we do the murder boys showdown I have a question.”  Matsuda interrupted. “How did you get Medaka to agree to all of this.”   
  
“I said I didn’t want anybody to die, because murder is the worst thing. I just wanted Hijirihara-kun to realize how bad murder is and stop killing people.”   
  
“And she believed you?”   
  
“Yep.”   
  
“God she’s so dumb.”   
  
Takumi lifted himself off the ground. He moved like a body possessed. He lurched and bent his joints, there was something horrific about his willpower to still move even after all the damage his body had taken. It looked like nothing could stop him. If you decapitated him, he would just keep shambling forward as a headless corpse. He wasn't even thinking of anything. He just needed to be close to Shuuji.   
  
“I'm useless, but so are you. To be honest I find a lot of your behavior annoying. You act embarrassingly clingy. You say stuff like good and evil, and heroes and villains and how you can’t forgive murderers but you don’t mean any of it right? It’s just you were jealous.”   
  
“What are you talking about?”   
  
“You were jealous, so you came to this town and kicked up a fuss just to get my attention. But, I’m also the one who always ignores you until you get like this. In my heart you’re the most important person to me, but there’s a difference between loving someone and being able to be with them. Other people they’re annoying. Aggravating. Irritating. I hate your goody two shoes attitude. I hate how you’re somehow crazier than I am. I don’t really feel like babysitting you or being responsible for another person’s mental health. Honestly just being with you makes me want to vomit.”   
  
“Oh, Hijirihara-kun, you’re such an unsociable guy…” Shuuji said with the same smile as ever. As if he wasn’t hearing a single thing that Takumi said. That was the way their relationship had been. They were best friends, but Shuuji talked on and on and Takumi didn’t listen. "This is why you don't have any friends besides me. This is why I'm the only one who can be your friend."   
  
"No, that's stupid. We just survived the same trauma that's all. It doesn't mean we're made for each other. In fact that's just as good of a reason to avoid each other..." After saying that. After saying all of those words of rejection. After saying words that would drive anybody into despair, Takumi finally raised his head and looked another person in the eyes. “Anyway, none of that matters. Let’s become friends again.”   
  
In an instant Takumi was pinned against the floor. Shuuji grabbed him, easily and threw him down over his shoulder and slammed him. Takumi barely resisted. They did not need to fight, because Takumi had given up on fighting back with Shuuji. It was going to be over in an instant. A knife at Takumi’s throat.   
  
Takumi could slit his own throat open just by speaking too much, that was how delicately his life hung in the balance. However, his eyes were just as sleepy as ever. “Shuuji, you were so unfriendly last time. You didn’t even try to kill me. I know you’re not serious about this, you’re just teasing me.”

Shuuji dropped the knife falling for the taunt. His hands touched Takumi’s neck, like he had wanted to for so long, like he had dreamed about doing. It was so much more personal this way. You could kill them while looking directly into their eyes, your face so close to their face.   
  
“Shut up. I just want it to be over. Just like that day. Just like our classmates... I want to..."   
  
They never should have hidden in the lockers.   
They should have faced everybody else.    
It wasn’t murderers that Shuuji could not forgive.   
It was himself for living when all of his classmates died.   
Takumi must have felt the same. They went through the exact same trauma after all.   
  
“Shuuji!”   
  
I don’t know.   
If it’s right to kill a murderer.   
If it’s just.   
If it’s moral.   
I don’t know about any of those things.   
I don’t know who deserves to die and who doesn’t.   
I’m not smart like you, I can’t figure those things out.   
  
He said, as he struggled with Shuuji’s hands around his neck.   
  
“Do you remember hiding in that locker? Do you remember what it felt like? We weren’t thinking about love, or justice or anything else. All I was thinking of was…”   
  
Takumi wanted to reach up and gently caress Shuuji’s face. He ended up punching him in the jaw instead to get him to let go of his neck. Oops. HIs hand slipped.   
  
“I wanna live! That’s what I was thinking! I was scared, and I wanted both you and me to live through it.”    
  
He had been so scared.   
This whole time he thought if he even began thinking about that day he survived. That day he was the sole survivor. He thought if he knew the answer then everything would end. And it would seem better if he hadn’t been the one to survive. If he had died along with the rest of his classmates.   
  
He was so stupid.   
Shuuji.   
Worked so hard to keep him alive.   
He was scared too, but he pulled Takumi into a locker and hid him to protect them.   
There was at least one person who wanted him to live.   
_I have Shuuji, and Shuuji has me._  
 _So I’m not going to say I should have just died, or it would have been better if I died and someone else lived anymore._


	68. Battle Royale

No teacher had ever bothered to teach Kurokami Medaka. 

She learned at such a fast rate. Absorbing all that knowledge and filing it away in her head. Adults were amused and interested at first, but being around her just made them feel inferior. They assumed this girl who could learn so fast, and knew so much more than them had gotten bored of them. They felt she was looking down on them. Whether she was looking up or looking down on them though the simple truth was that everyone left before Medaka even had a chance to look at them.   
  
Zenkichi was special because he stayed, him and no one else. There was one person who attempted to teach her. Even though Medaka could grasp it all by reading through a text book he still ran through the problems with her like she was a normal student.    
  
A mathematician friend of her father’s. His name was Professor Oikura. The way he talked to her, it was definitely the voice of an adult talking to a child. “And so, your chances are getting it right are higher if you switch from envelope a to envelope c. Twice as high. They call this the Monty Hall problem.”    
  
Medaka felt like shouting out loud. 

_ This is fun!   _ That was her reaction - for the first time ever learning something had been fun. Before that she felt like there was nothing she loved to do, and nothing she enjoyed doing. She felt like she was a super computer endlessly calculating new numbers of pi, you just put the number in, let the calculation run, and arrive at an answer without feeling anything.    
  
Getting good grades in school was the right thing to do, but she never had any fun. Getting a perfect one hundred on a test was something expected out of her. Listening to his explanation, she discovered studying could be fun - and that seemed far more valuable than anything else she’d been learning. 

It was a shocking discovery.   
  
_ It’s okay for studying to be fun -  _  the idea had never occurred to Medaka. Something felt wrong. It felt immoral, or somehow crimminal for Medaka to be enjoying herself this much when her brain merely churned out numbers.    
  
But before she knew it, she was asking him. “Are there any more problems like that?”    
  
“Yup! Lots of them.” He replied with a smile. He patted her on the head. Even though she had done nothing praiseworthy. Even if it was easy for her to solve a problem like that. “I can teach you as many as you want. As long as you promise to love math even more. As long as you keep loving math.” 

She was happy.    
His words made her happy.    
  
“Math is beautiful, because there’s always a right answer. It doesn’t matter how you get there as long as the answer is right. Every single person can calculate in a slightly different way, so you can almost tell how other people think by the different ways they put together the numbers.”    
  
As if the entire world was simply a puzzle to be solved.   
As if all you needed to do was to work hard to arrive at the right answer.    
This man’s admiration for math was simple and pure.    
  
“Now, do your homework and meet me again next time. Promise that you’ll come. That you won’t get bored of math.” 

Medaka met up with him a few more times.    
She learned eventually that this man had been working his entire life to solve a problem.    
There were mathematicians who famously came up with a solution and had their names remembered by history. He was a man with such an ambition.    
  
Medaka solved it for him in less than three hours. She met him the next day with the papers in her hands. She expected the man to smile as he always did. Math was about arriving at the right answer after all. 

He disappeared into the other room instead. It took hours for him to come back. Medaka realized why when she grew tired of waiting patiently and knocked on the door. The door which had been left unlocked slowly fell open.    
  
The first thing she saw was an overturned stool. She saw his body but it wasn’t moving. She saw his feet but they weren’t touching the floor. The man had written all over the solution Medaka had handed over to him. 

‘THE RIGHT ANSWER DOESN'T EXIST’.    
  
He must have thought that she had gotten bored again. But Medaka never got bored. Other people got bored of her, and they left her. Math is fun. Math is fun because there’s always a right answer. People can calculate in all different ways but they’ll always arrive at the right answer. That was the gist of what he said, so why was he saying the right answer doesn't exist? Don’t say that. Then what about me? I don't... I don't exist? 

The man had killed himself. Medaka realized. She didn’t know what a dead body looked like until she saw one right in front of her. She should have been more scared, she was what, five, six maybe? Her complete lack of fear only filled her with more disgust for how inhuman and unfeeling she was. Merely a machine to process data. Merely a computer that solves equations without feeling anything. She arrives at the correct answer without struggling to solve it.    
  
He lived for decades longer than her, and yet had not been able to achieve what she had in three hours. How small. How small he was compared to her, and how pitiful. She cried. She cried for him. It didn’t even occur to her that she might just be crying because an adult she had liked had died. That she was just a little girl crying all alone in an empty room with a corpse hanging from the rafters. 

 

🦔

 

“I wanted to make the pitiful people happy, and help them! That is why I was born!”Angie said as she jumped back. The ground where she had been standing a moment ago exploded just from Medaka swinging her fist. There was nothing she could do to fight back, all Angie could do was dodge. “Wow, it’s really annoying to hear other people say that isn’t it?” 

  
Angie had no magical abilities. She was not a weirdo who could perfectly copy any murder technique like Takumi. She was not someone who would think of a way to kill someone no matter what situation she was in. She was not someone like Zerozaki who possessed a supernatural urge to murder others.    
  
She couldn’t counter Medaka’s attacks at all.    
Angie threw sickles from a long range at Medaka, and Medaka simply deflected them with her hands. As if all of her attacks were just bouncing off of her. Normal people could not touch her.    
At this point she wasn't even fighting against Medaka.    
She was merely fighting to stay alive.    
Her own reflexes and her strange flexibility were the only thing keeping her afloat.    
Medaka would hate to hear this, but Angie really was just a normal girl.    
The only reason she had been able to kill so far was because she was relying on sneak attacks.    
  
Medaka brought her foot up high and slammed it all the way down, and Angie jumped back with a handspring.    
  
“You wanted to make people happy so you killed them. That makes no sense at all. Are you really going to pull that, we’re actually alike after all hero-villain crap? So cliche! I’m so over it!”    
  
Medaka for such an overwhelming presence was a rather thin skinned girl.    
  
“Why did you kill people?”   
  
Medaka asked.    
She still didn’t know.   
She was curious to learn just like a child would be.    
  
“Hmmm,” Angie replied flippantly. The way she was pursing her lips it really looked like she was just making up an answer. “Atua told Angie that all the people are supposed to be hiding underground. If some of them escape to the surface, then you have to kill them.”    
  
“All of the people?” 

“Yes, yes! The ones who were in this city! We had to clear it out so we’d have an appropriate board to play our game on. No worries, no worries. As long as they stay in their bunker deep underneath the city they won’t be harmed. You could say Angie killed them because those are the rules.”    
  
They broke a rule.   
Don’t come out to the city streets.    
The same way that the bracelets around their hands would kill them for performing a forbidden action.    
  
“The rules are the rules. If you follow them you’re a good person. Auta makes them and then you follow them.”    
  
“That’s wrong.”    
  
“Atua’s words are never wrong! Atua sees all, and will save only those who believe.”    
  
Angie folded her hands. A supremely selfish girl. A girl was convinced that she was right. A girl who could never admit that she was wrong. A narrow minded girl. A girl who didn’t accept anybody else’s view points other than her own. A girl who was raised all alone in a closed off environment.    
  
It was irritating Medaka, as if Angie was mocking her. She was throwing it all in her face.    
  
“Hmm… so that’s how you go about manipulating people into giving you what you want. To get exactly what you want… just like you expect. That satisfies you? How boring.”    
  
Medaka stopped her hand and uncurled her fingers before she could throw her next punch.    
  
“Hmm… That’s not very nice. You’ll arouse Atua’s wrath, you know.” For the first time Medaka saw a genuine flicker of emotion in Angie’s otherwise empty and colorless eyes. As if before this point she had been merely acting as someone else’s puppet, regurgitating someone else’s words. “Hey, hey, Medaka-chan how many people have you helped? One hundred? One thousand? Even though you’ve helped so many people, they’re still all praying to you. No matter how many times it happens, they’ll just keep coming back to you. Do you understand? They’ll just keep praying to you.”    
  
The hands. The hands. The hands.   
The hands that demanded things from her. The hands that took things from her. Dirty hands of the unwashed masses. The untalented. The stupid. The poor. The sick. 

“You don’t even hate them a little bit for always relying on you? It doesn’t make you feel inconvenienced at all going out of your way to help others? It’s not a risk to stick your neck out for others?”    
  
Angie realized she had fallen to her knees in front of the other girl.   
It could look like she was praying to her.   
It could also look like a mafia style execution.    
Because she was an entirely selfish girl. She knew. A girl who was entirely selfless.    
  
“You’re such a good, kind girl aren’t you?”

It was like the whole world was full of fools. No matter how long they lived, adults that had lived decades didn’t know as much as her. The whole world was made up of nothing more than stupid babies. She was the one who had to guide them. She was the one who had to take care of them because they simply did not know better.   
  
But. But. But.    
  
Mikan said.  _ You would make a terrible mother.  _ You always leave children like me behind. Medaka herself was so afraid of being left behind. I’ve never gotten bored of anyone. She firmly insisted. They’re always getting bored of me first. They get bored of me than they leave. In essence that made her the exact opposite of Enoshima Junko who was bored of the entire world.  _ I live to help others. I don’t give two figs about anything else. I only feel happy when I’m helping people.  _

Mikan’s mother who went to work as a doctor and was praised by her colleagues. She went home and ignored her daughter who was covered in bruises and cuts. If her husband was beating her daughter, she ignored that too. She ignored all of that, and then went on believing she was helping people. She wasn’t even looking at the wounds that covered her own daughter’s body. Medaka realized in that moment the snag in her thinking. It was like the same kind of hangman’s noose knot that pulled the rope tighter and tighter around that man’s net. 

_What if the help you’re giving isn’t helping people?_ _What if it was hurting them._  
Then.   
Medaka would simply ignore it.   
She would ignore the facts, and convince herself she was helping them anyway. 

Just to feel good about herself. 

Medaka picked up one of the sickle’s off the ground that Angie had thrown away, and brought it to the other girl’s neck. “I just wanted to help her you know, but there was no helping Nanami. No matter how hard I tried to help she wouldn’t listen. And then I… She was going to hurt people, she was going to hurt everyone so I… I killed her.”    
  
Medaka took two swings.    
Both of Angie’s hands, the hands she used to kill people fell off. They were cut off completely at the wrist. Angie looked down in shock. She guessed. She would never make art again. She could not draw a single thing she was feeling anymore.    
  
Just like that time. Medaka raised the sickle in the air.    
Helping people.   
What a lonely thing.    
This is just one fake girl’s opinion.    
But you should have just made friends with someone who was your equal Medaka.    
Someone who didn’t need your help.    
  
Before Medaka could swing down she noticed her arm was not moving. Her eyes darted back and she saw, invisible threads everywhere like she had walked face first into a spider’s net. Oh, she understood now. Kirumi had disappeared from Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko the moment she saw Medaka, concealed her presence, and waited to set up and ambush.    
  
Medaka pulled down her arm with everything she had. Kirumi who was hidden behind a pillar with those strings still connected to her fingers, was pulled face first into the pillar. The strings broke first and then Medaka was freed.    
  
Just then Medaka’s sickle met more resistance. A steel sword. A man who had the exact same color, and hardness of steel. Munakata Kyosuke had blocked her blow with all of his strength. Medaka knew she could easily overpower him, and started to when suddenly someone’s arms slipped underneath hers in a hold and she was lifted into the air. Sakakura lifted her into the air in a wrestling move. Hey, he was supposed to be a boxer! 

“I don’t get it…” Medaka mumbled.    
  
“What is there to get? I’m tired of whining like a big baby. If I’m a man the least I can do is protect a couple of kids.” Sakakura growled as he held her back with all of his strength.    
  
Medaka was easily able to counter his hold, step out of it, and then elbow Sakakura in the face to get him to fall back. Just as she did she noticed two attacks coming in parallel at exactly the same time. Takumi and Shuuji, they both acted like they were one in the same.    


Takumi picked up a knife. Shuuji picked up a knife. They both swung at the same time, and Medaka was hit by two marks formed in an ‘x’ across her back. She hadn’t dodged because she was stunned. She didn’t think it was possible to be that close to another person. She was jealous.    
  
At the same time Angie wasn’t where she had once been. Medaka looked around before she finally saw, Ikkun grabbing Angie by the stump of her wrist. He wasn’t planning on confronting Medaka. He was just going to grab Angie, and run away to where he had hidden Zerozaki who had passed out due to blood loss.    
  
“I don’t get it. Why is everybody acting like I’m the bad guy here?”    
  
Everyone’s turning against me.   
Everyone hates me.   
  
“Why is everyone acting like I’m the one who needs to be stopped?”    
  
Medaka wanted to run after them, but before she could she was punched on the top of her head. It was like she was being scolded. Standing tall over her was a skinny boy who had barely presence at all, and incredibly tired eyes.    
  
“Hey idiot.”   
  
Matsuda Yasuke said.    
  
“I know we’re all a bunch of assholes, but it’s not like we want to see a girl keep hurting herself. I may be bad, but I’m not Junko bad. I don’t enjoy watching you suffer. ”    
  
Medaka saw Zenkichi where Matsuda was standing. Stop fighting others. And stop getting hurt. That was what Zenkichi begged her. Hey, Mikan I was like that too. Medaka thought. When I got covered in injuries. When I needed bandages. Nobody else noticed. Nobody but Zenkichi.    
  
Not a saint, not a martyr, just a little girl crying all alone. She wanted what anybody else wanted when they were hurting. She wanted the pain to stop. If she cried now. If she begged for forgiveness. Would Nanami stop hating her? Would she forgive the girl who had killed her?   
  
“You’re such a good and kind person, Matsuda-san.” Medaka realized there had been someone hiding behind Matsuda. Emukae Mukae had a rotten smile on her face. “How long are you going to keep hurting other people with that kindness of yours?”   
  
“Wha- what the hell are you doing?” 

 

🦔

“Jeez, everyone really does wear the kiddie gloves when they’re dealing with you, Kurokami-san!” 

Emukae lifted up the hem of her dress and slammed her foot into the ground. The ground she was standing on immediately began to rot and dissolve away, a crack appeared in the ground and it traveled all way to a nearby pillar. It climbed the pillar, and then to the ceiling. The ceiling and pillar crumbled at the same time.    
  
Large chunks of rock from the ceiling fell and hit Medaka in the head. The mall had a partial glass ceiling to let the sunlight in, not that it did them any good in the dark. Emukae’s rampaging poewr cut through the glass two, cracks appeared and then it shattered. The glass rained down from above like falling stars.   
  
Several chunks hit Medaka, gauging out her flesh. She didn’t bother to dodge. Because at last moment she had thrown herself over Yasuke to protect him from the same falling ceiling. Mikan had done similarly with the bodies of Fuyuhiko and Peko, though they were both spared from anything falling as if by luck. 

“You’re just such a good girl! So good it makes me laugh!” Matsuda had once again underestimated Emukae. He kept making this mistake with her. Just because she acted docile for a little while, just because she looked like a starry eyed girl talking about love he kept forgetting she was dangerous. Komaeda too. Kamukura too. He forgot how dangerous all of them could be. “People really buy that goody two shoes act of yours!? It’s amazing.”    
  
Medaka pushed herself off of Matsuda and off of the ground. She stared at Emukae stoically as always. Stoic. She was not trying to feel anything. Medaka knew the truth was, if she felt anything she might easily end up like Emukae.    
  
“Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe everybody’s not a liar like you are, maybe good people really exist.” 

Emukae smiled, stretching her face to its limit. “There’s no good people. There’s nobody good in the entire world. If people are so good then why did I have to watch that happen to Kumagawa, over, and over, and over again!” Emukae’s voice raised to a high pitched scream.    
“I tried to help-”   
  
“No you didn’t. Hey, hey do you know what a doppelganger is? It’s someone who is just like you in every way, but they’re not you. No, it’s more than that. They’re someone who feels more you, than you yourself are. They’re closer to the truth. They grasp the essence, yes something like that. So if you're such a good girl why is your truth someone like Enoshima Junko?” 

Emukae continued her crazed babbling. Medaka wondered what it said about her current mental health that she could understand what she was saying, even a little bit.    
  
“One conceals the other reveals. Something like that. I pretend to be okay with wounding others, but Mikan heals their wounds. Komaeda pretends he’s okay with being alone, and Kumagawa gets close to other people even though they wound him. Takumi pretends he loves murderers, and Shuuji hates them so much he wants to kill them.”    
  
There’s always another side to every single action.    
People are never alone. They have a friend just on the other side of the mirror.    
  
“Enoshima Junko didn’t destroy people out of despair. Despair is such a bullshit reason to do anything. She just couldn’t be like other people. She was a little girl who couldn’t be normal, so she smashed normal people, she broke them to bits, she played with them like toys and got bored of them and threw them away before anyone could throw her away.”    
  
Emukae’s breath, her words, Emukae, all of it all smelled so rotten, so foul. Medaka felt like she was being choked by her scent along. Where had Emukae been before this? She looked and smelled like a corpse that had been dug out of the bottom of the ocean.    
  
“Medaka-chan, you don’t really like normal people do you? Could it be you’re just jealous of them? So jealous you want to beat the shit out of them.”    
  
That’s why you’re always fighting. You just wanted to beat the shit out of somebody.    
  
“Just like you beat the shit out of Kumagawa.” 

Medaka snapped. Her sudden transformation. It was like the transformation a person who has been bitten goes when the moon comes out and they turn into a werewolf. One moment a girl, the next moment a beast. The transformation was so sudden it almost looked painful, like her flesh was ripping off.    
  
Medaka lunged forward and Emukae jumped back at the same time.    
  
“What the hell are you doing? You can’t fight. You can’t touch other people with your hands!”   
  
“But these aren’t my hands!?” 

Emukae revealed her own hands from the sleeves of her dress. They were brown instead of the corpse white Emukae’s skin was, but instead a dark brown. The same hands that had been severed from Angie minutes ago. She had cut her own hands off at the wrist and reattached them. To be specific she cut one hand off, lazily sewed one of Angie’s on, and then cut the other hand, and again sewn on one of Angie’s. Normally she would not be able to move a dead hand reattached to her, but her body didn’t move because of nerves or signals from her brain, she was simply a girl who possessed a dead body like a ghost and puppeteered it around.   
  
How did Zombies move if their bodies if they weren’t receiving any signals from the brain? If the movie was cool enough you didn’t really have to bother answering such a question. In fact, I find movies that go out of their way to explain the zombie virus as something like rabies to be kind of boring.    
  


“You can’t just take someone’s hands and sew them to your wrists! Medical science doesn’t work that way!” Matsuda yelled at her in frustration.    
  
“We’re not using science rules, we're using zombie rules which are way cooler.”    
  
“Gross.”    
  
“Oh shut up Matsuda-san, you’ve got a girl’s hand hidden in your pocket.” Emukae rolled her eyes. Unlike Angie however she did not dodge, she went entirely on the attack. The air around her hands began to rot, and the flesh of her own hands bubbled and released a thick dark, as if she was burning her flesh, searing it off.    
  
She rushed at Medaka low to the ground. She raised her whole body and swung up with her hands. Medaka dodged by kicking her legs up at the last moment to kick Emukae’s rotting hands away, she turned her whole body around still dodging as Emukae forced her down the stairs from the main lobby to the food court of the mall.   
  
Emukae’s powerful strikes were just a bit slower. She hit the ground and it completely rotted away into sand. She missed once, twice. Medaka jumped up on a table and picked up a large dinner plate that had been left behind by someone else. She used it as a shield to catch Emukae’s burning hands, but Emukae pulled one hand back and punched straight through it, uncaring for the broken pieces that tore away from her flesh. Like she didn’t feel pain. Of course she didn’t, she was a zombie.    
  
Medaka kicked her away quickly. The kick was a mere reflex. An instinct to get something dangerous far away from her. Emukae flew back, but at the last moment slammed her hands into the ground to slow herself. The ground she was tumbling on quickly rotted away and turned into sand, and Emukae fell almost comfortably into it stopping her fall entirely.   
  
She kicked out of the sand entirely and lunged again at Medaka, clawing through the air with one of her rotten hands. Medaka performed an entire flip to dodge. At that point Emukae thought Medaka was just showing off. 

Medaka ran up the walls and performed a wall jump like she was super mario. She landed on a giant chandelier, at least several times bigger than her. It was another decoration for the mall. The people decorating this place sure had tacky taste. Emukae mirrored Medaka’s action to reach the same place, and then wrapped her hands around one of the many thick metal cables keeping such a large chandelier hanging. Between her fingers the cable snapped, metal melting like it was butter. The whole chandelier shook and Emukae went after her.    
  
She once again jumped in the air like a predator and swung her hand down, the glass broke from the force, large chunks of the chandelier melted, but Emukae missed due to Medaka’s light feet. Emukae moved to recover but before she could Medaka who had thrown her body low to dodge, used a sweeping kick to knock Emukea off of her feet.    
  
As she fell just out of spite Emukae slashed through the last of the cables keeping the chandelier up, causing it to fall along with her and Medaka. Medaka crashed on top of a table, which slowed her fall, got back on her feet, and then threw herself underneath another of the dinner tables for the food court.    
  
Emukae’s hand burst through, and she melted the whole table. Medaka thought she really should have scene that coming. Emukae grabbed her one by the neck, the other hand still rotting away reached slowly for Medaka’s face.    
  
Medaka could only grab Emukae by the wrist, and struggle against her to stop her. Then, Medaka’s grip went slack and she let go of Emukae’s hand. Emukae punched straight forward, but when Medaka jerked her head aside she missed and her hand went through the floor instead. Emukae was stunned to find it wasn’t as easy to remove her hand. She’d gotten stuck.    
  
Medaka smirked, raised both of her legs, and kicked her off of her then. The stitches came undone and Emukae’s entire body fell away from her hand still stuck there in the ground. Medaka realized at that moment she could cut this girl into pieces and she still would not die.    
  
Medaka must have been bitten. She could feel herself transform into a beast.    
  
“I just wanted to live a quiet life.” Medaka said to her.   
  
Emukae spat blood in her face. Emukae’s blood was a dark maroon, because it no longer flowed through her veins. “I wouldn’t even qualify what you do as trying to live. You’re just being lazy. A quiet life? A normal life? If by any chance you manage to achieve that for a single moment it won’t be because of anything you did. It will be purely because of the talent you were born with. You yourself and your talent are separate things, understand? You tell others to work hard, but you always take the easy way out and rely on that talent of yours.”    
  
“Rrrrrrrrrrggggggg.”   
  
“Heh? Haaaaah!? Have you forgotten how to use your human words? Friends? Who needs that? You long since gave up on relying on anything that wasn’t talent.That’s why you don’t need other people, they’re useless to you like they are to Junko. I see right through you. Deep down in your heart, you’re envious of people without talent. You want to believe you’re this amazing person, but what actually gets results is that supercomputer brain if yours. Nobody, not a single person wants you around, they just want your talent! And that makes you envious, even of a lowly person like me.” 

It’s talent's fault.   
Emukae screamed.   
Because you were a person that had talent.   
Emukae shouted.    
A shallow and lazy person always relying on her natural talent.    
She really did sound like Kumagawa. The Kumagawa of two years ago. The one who blamed and rallied against talent in an empty way merely to lash out.    
  
Emukae was thrown, and chairs flew in the air. She merely laughed off the impact. Her head was dented but her brains were rotted anyway so what did she care.    
  
“Do you understand, Kurokami-san?”    
  
“Yeah, I  understand that you’re incredibly annoying!” Medaka punched straight through Emukae. She realized in that moment she didn’t need to hold back anything. Emukae was already dead so she wouldn’t die, even if she was killed. She didn’t need to feel guilt like with Nanami. She didn’t need to hold back like with Nanami. “Are you done? Are you like done? You’re totally lecturing me! So the misfortunate are to be forgiven no matter what they do? And if someone leads a fortunate life, they deserve to be ridiculed.”    
  
She grabbed Emukae by the hair and forced the other girl to look her in the eyes. “You know Kumagawa-kun used to bully me in middle school. He beat me up every single day. He beat me up because Ajimu-san was beating him up, but what does that mean? Should I just have shut up and take my beatings because Kumagawa-kun was suffering worse than I was. I’m just breaking your finger, so stop whining you should know what it feels like to have your arm broken. That’s you, that’s what all of you sound like.”    
  
Medaka screamed.    
  
“Kamukura, just keeps messing with my head. He tries to kill me over and over again. But I should just shut up and take it because I feel bad for him. Because I was born with talent, and he had to go through brain surgery again and again to become like me. I should just let him beat me up to make him feel better, is that it?” 

“But, Medaka-chan.”   
  
“Like. Shut up.”   
  
“Medaka-chan, going through the exact same circumstances that Kumagawa-kun did, you reacted the exact same way. You became violent just like he did.”   
  
“I said shut up!”   
  
“You’ve been betrayed by everyone here over and over again, and now you don’t trust anybody, and you’ve been fighting against everyone.”    
  
“Shut up. Lame. Lame. Lame. Lame. Lame.”    
  
“Kumagawa-san didn’t forgive himself for what he did to you, you know? He still feels bad about it to this day, so why is everyone so quick to forgive you? It has nothing to do with strength of weakness. Kumagawa-san is just some homeless kid who no one gives a damn about but you’re a princess from an important family.”    
  
Emukae smiled.    
  
“It’s the ones with power who always get forgiven. They just keep doing whatever they want, and getting forgiven. Well I’m sick of it. Even if Kumagawa forgives you I won’t.”   
  
Yeah.

She was jealous.    
Unbelievably so. Jealousy pricked her heart.    
  
Medaka began to mumble, like a completely maddened beast. She had been told the worst thing she always feared. Nobody loved her. They loved her talent. Nobody forgave her. They forgave her talent. 

  
Her pits like completely black pits. Her heart felt completely empty. Yet, she was wearing a satisfied smile on her face. Was this? Was this makig her happy? Exactly. The emotion that roiled in her heart at the moment could only be called ‘joy’.    
  
At that moment Kurokami Medaka finally understood despair.  _ Lucky you, that’s despair you’re feeling.  _ Enoshima Junko’s condescending voice rang in her ears.   
  
The collapse of everything was so beautiful.    
People who were tormented were so lovable.    
Tortured screams by her ears were so satisfying.   
Mutilated corpses were so laughable. 

Even the feeling of hopelessness that wrapped like hands around her neck was so sweet. It was like being lovingly caressed by the hand of her lovers. Medaka finally understood despair. It was just pain. It was nothing but pain. She could feel everything from her fingers to the top of her head, clearly and distinctly. This is pain. This is pain. Pain is fine. It’s just pain. This pain means I’m alive.    
  
Ahah, now I am alive.   
I truly exist, right here.    
Despair just means feeling nothing but pain.    
No wonder the Ultimate Despairs could cause pain to others like it was nothing. They only saw themselves as existing in that pain. For the first time Medaka felt like she was human and capable of feeling pain the same way as everyone else was. This pain connects us.    
  
Even this ironic tragic ending of the girl who only wanted to help others realizing exactly how much she hurt others, that too was actually so satisfying.    
  
“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”   
  
Medaka’s teeth chattered.    
  
Her hand punched all the way through Emukae’s stomach, exploding on the other side. She didn’t let Emukae fall away, she grabbed at the intestines that had fallen out of her stomach, and pulled them all out. Then like the girl was on a long rope, Medaka spun her around and around.    
  
“How dare you. How dare you. How dare you.”   
  
Emukae flew throught the air, and flew all around until the intestine rope snapped. It was a level of violence that stretched beyond violence. Zombies weren’t human anymore so you could do whatever to them. Dice them up with a chain saw. Blow them up. Torture them. Shoot them in the head and watch their brains explode everywhere.    
  
Emukae’s back hit the wall.    
  
“I can’t stand you. I can’t stand you. I can’t stand you.”    
  
Medaka continued to murmur in her despair. The truth was Emukae hated everyone. Everyone alive that had abandoned Kumagawa. She’d kill every last one of them. The person she hated the most was herself though for not being by his side right now. For not being by his side two years ago. Before he met Enoshima Junko, before he became involved with Hope’s Peak. The three years he spent wandering alone, suffering alone, if only Emukae had chased after him.    
  
So that’s why it was fine.   
Medaka had so much pent up hatred inside of her. All of those negative emotions she pent up for years. If Medaka wanted to hate someone then Emukae would give her somebody to hate. 

_ Do you hate me? _ _  
_ _ That’s fine. _ _  
_ _ I hate myself too.  _

She could understand Medaka because she was a monster too. 

Kumagawa and Emukae were particularly untalented individuals. If they had one talent it was this, making things worse. They were also the types who believed things had to get worse before they could get better.   
  
“My, my. When you’re away the children will play. Is that how that saying goes? Well, even if it doesn’t go that way...”

  
Light footsteps.    
From a person lighter and more see through than air.    
Amami Nanami.    
  
“You two are having quite a bit of fun without me. I’m jealous, frankly.”    
  
Nanami in her white kimono as always, curled a finger at her chin and made a thoroughly unpleasant expression as she reached the place where Emukae and Medaka were.    
  
“Funny time to wake up from your nap,” Emukae said somehow even though a significant chunk of her lower body was missing.    
  
“I wasn’t napping. I was just waiting. A lady always keeps a gentleman waiting.”    
  
“I’m not a gentleman!”    
  
“Well that’s obvious, you’re such a rude girl after all. The truth is I don’t really like you that much so it was a little fun to see that girl beat you up.” Tsk, tsk, she seemed to say. That girl with a natural amount of composure. Medaka looked at her like she was looking at a ghost. Oh that was right, this entire time she had thought Nanami was dead because she had killed her.    
  
“Aa… Ahhh. Nanami. You lied to me.”    
  
Medaka’s voice whined.    


Medaka moved to finish Emukae off, but Nanami was faster. She stood exactly between Emukae and Medaka, and Medaka’s fist stopped. She was too afraid. Too afraid to kill someone. Medaka redirected her own fist and punched herself hard in the side of her face instead.    
  
“Plus or minus it doesn’t matter does it? Both of you girls were thinking something along the lines of ‘everything will be solved if I die’, right? This isn’t a joke. Your cheap sense of self sacrifice is completely and unnecessary.” 

Emukae felt like she had read Nanami completely correctly.    
She was really just like an older sister scolding her foolish younger sister.    
  
“Medaka. Long time no see. I’m glad to see you so energetic and lively as always.”    
  
“Ah. Ahhh. Ahhhhhhh….”    
  
“Always stomping around and throwing tantrums. Causing everyone to fuss over you. You really are just a kid aren’t you?”   
  
Medaka had no idea what was going on, not really.    
She had no explanation or even an apology from Nanami.    
Just for the moment she was happy she hadn’t killed a person.   
Nanami reached forward to pat her on the head as if to say she wasn’t going anywhere.    
  
This is so stupid Matsuda thought.   
Stupid is the absolute best way to put it.    
Terrible burden. Unnecessary meddling. Unwelcome nuisance.    
It’s just the usual thing. He had absolutely no purpose here.    
He picked an unlit cigarette from his pockets and put it in his lips.    
  
Nanami just needed to be brought to Medaka again, and Medaka just needed to see Nanami. Neither of them needed him from the start. As he turned away from that scene feeling like he definitely did not belong he spotted a familiar black silhouette.    
  
“You know you’re usually useless Kamu-kun but this time you did absolutely nothing. I’m actually impressed. You’ve punched through my rock bottom expectations for you and fallen completely into hell. .” Matsuda grumbled.    
  
“How illogical. It’s not about being useful. It’s about doing what needs to be done.”    
  
“Oh yeah, it’s totally not about that.” Matsuda said flippantly.    


Kamukura was standing there with someone in his arms. Behind him was Sonia, holding onto Gundham’s arm looking concerned. Matsuda looked closer at the bundle in Kamukura’s arms and saw it was a child curled up against his chest. The child had blue hair, was dressed like a miniature adult and had a scarf around his neck. He was shivering like he was cold.    
  
Kamukura let him out of his arms and the child stood up. He looked annoyed at Kamukura for having carried him so far.    
  
“What the hell it’s just some brat?”    
  
Matsuda said, still confused.    
What Kamukura had been doing all this time and how it had involved this kid.    
  
“I hate you.”    
  
The kid said suddenly, and then punched Matsuda in the balls without warning. Matsuda spat out the unlit cigarette in his mouth and fell forward curling up on the ground in pain.    
  
“Ow! What the hell was that for?”    
  
“Hmm? Aren’t you always saying something like ‘I deserve to be punched’ Matsuda-kun? How curious, you’re so self loathing and yet you act this way when people hate you.” Kamukura said, watching with disinterested looking eyes.    
  
“Smug bastard! Go to hell! No wait a moment, I never should have brought you back from the dead. You shoulda stayed in hell!”    
  
Apparently that’s how we’re ending this chapter.   
With Matsuda getting punched in the balls.   
Happy ending?    
  
**[ WEEK THREE: HUMAN PSYCHO + LOGICAL PART TWO. END. ]**


End file.
